cancer, red balloons and beauty in the details

I don’t believe there is a reason for everything. There are events, things that can’t be made sense of, that simply defy reason. I don’t believe in reasons for some things.

But signs. I believe in signs. Good ones. Like hummingbirds. And Friday the 13ths. And red balloons. I believe in red balloons. Like this one I saw float away from the Rose Bowl on Saturday, at the Autism Speaks 5K.

You could say that it was a red balloon that brought me to the blogosphere.

I’ve told the story more than once, but here’s the Reader’s Digest Condensed (ish) Version:

Summer 2010: I read online about a call for artists. An art auction to benefit the Gulf Spill cleanup. A blogger’s words to inspire an artists’s work. I was a magazine editor, a writer and photographer.

I email: are non-blogger artists welcome?

This is how I met BlogHer.

I’m sent a few sentences by someone I do not know. Powerful words. I style an inspiration board, a photo collage-style I do often, using the words of the unknown blogger, tacked alongside things I believe in: cookie fortunes, quotes typed on 3×5 cards, tutus, Kodachrome slides, ballet flats, sequins. A photo of a red balloon.

I tack things to the board, rearrange them once, twice, place the red balloon in a corner. The red balloon about life. About a life. About loss. About cancer.

I send the photo file off. I go to see the blog from which the words came. I see familiar words I don’t want anyone to recognize: B-Cell Follicular Aggressive Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.

This was how I met my friend Eden.

The cancer Eden’s husband survived took the life of my beautiful cousin about 8 months prior. I’d carried that balloon in memory of her in the LLS Light the Night Walk. What had meant something only to me in that collage took on a whole new meaning. Our collaborative art project took on a new meaning (and wouldn’t be the last one).

I don’t believe cancer happens for a reason. But I believe in red balloons. I believe in their ability to defy gravity. I believe in their ability to fly.

Sunday, while editing photos from the walk, I saw the photo I had snapped of the red balloon leaving Los Angeles for some unknown destination.

Then had an email from Look Good Feel Better, and, well, you know…signs.

The Look Good Feel Better campaign has a simple, powerful, beautiful mission: to help women living with cancer feel beautiful. I love that. When they asked if I might post this video, I was all over it.

I love that while we fight to find treatment and cures for cancers like B-Cell Follicular Aggressive Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, we can also help women feel a bit more like themselves in the midst of treatments that often steal from them the familiar face they used to see. The ‘them’ they used to know. The energy they used to know. The ease with which they took some things for granted, like my cousins did in scooping up her babies in her arms.

My cousin was still the same talented, fabulous woman when her long, dark tresses were replaced with beautiful headscarves. She looked chic with her Jean Seburg hair. But these choices weren’t ones she made. They were made for her. By cancer.

From LA to NY, I didn’t get to spend as much time my cousin, her magically musical husband and their beautiful babies as much as I wanted to. We emailed a lot. We sent snail mail. The last thing I ever sent were a pair of ballet flats, a Liberty-esque print. I have a thing for ballet flats as anyone who knows me is well aware. Why send flowers when you can send shoes? Floral ones.

I remember a note that said something about stopping to smell the flowers, or tiptoeing through them or something light and silly because sometimes we needed to be light and silly. The shoes were pretty. Cancer is not. So, I sent a little bit of pretty.

She told me she loved them, though I don’t know how much she got to wear them. When I bought them I imagined seeing her wearing them in person the next year. But the next year didn’t come.

The following autumn at the Light the Night Walk I carried two balloons - one in her memory, the other in honor of Eden’s husband. I wish I’d worn floral shoes.

Please watch this video from the Look Good Feel Better campaign, and learn more about the cause by visiting them online, on Facebook and twitter.