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Now to the love email.
Love is a hard one for me. I think it is the hardest of all really.
Love is the most important but also the most at risk of reverting to cliché. Love is the engine that has me sitting here. Love keeps me in a saddle. Love propels me in front of crowds. Love of a boy. And there is pain in that. Lots of pain. But also power. Lots of power.
But enough of that. Let’s revert to form. Back to the picture. The picture on my Ride site. Love.
Love was taken one day before Sing. Three days after The MRI. Like Sing, love was taken in a time of sadness. Incurable they said and they were right. Incurable sadness.
What does one do in the face of news like that?
Day one assume shocked position and let your children pull you forward. All of them.
Day two and three. Dust off the video camera. Start taking pictures like crazy.
Day four? Get the hell out of town. Anywhere. Not here.
Victoria was close, Victoria was a place we had never been with the kids and best of all Victoria was not home. So we escaped.
Having checked into our hotel, we decided to go for a walk. When Love was taken, Sam was off buying a portable blender at the Bay and the rest of us were walking with Gampy through Beacon Hill Park. Our kids being kids decided to explore. Climbing up a rock face here (or at least what passes as a rock face to two two year olds and a five year old) or wandering off the path there.
One of those wanders took Sarah to a tree. A lovely treee. It was a beautiful natural setting so I took Sarah’s picture. And then without prompting Baird and Finn joined Sarah, and I was able to snap off a series of absolutely amazing photographs. Love is a part of that series.
I like to think that the love of siblings drew those three together in that time and at that place. The love of family. The love of friends. And smiles, such lovely smiles perched firmly underneath the loyalty of bald heads. Incurable doesn’t have a place in that picture. Incurable didn’t exist at that time and in that place. It never can and never will.
But here is the thing about love, or at least love as we lived it. While I love that picture, cherish it even, love is incapable of being reduced to a photograph. I have no photograph of Baird and Finn touching each other so delicately on the head after Finn returned home from his initial hospitalization in February 2007. I have no picture of Baird insisting that we go see Finn the night of Finn’s major resection surgery in August of 2007. I have no pictures or audio of Sarah’s keening when we told her that Finn was going to die. We have no picture of Finn putting hugs into blue bear for Sarah when she was upset. We have no pictures of Finn calling for “my brudder”. Calling for Baird. We do have pictures of Baird and Finn holding hands, sharing a secret or dressed up in scarves and racing their cars. We do have pictures of Sarah reading to Finn, stroking his hair and holding Finn’s hand for one of Finn’s last walks on the cul de sac. Love cannot be reduced to a picture because love is what drove our family together and then drove us forward. Love still does.
So while love is captured in the Love photograph, it will never be defined by it.
So what does Love mean to a bunch of riders. A lot. Love powers our Finnish. A tremendous gaggle of pink riders crossing the Finn-ish line together. The power of that Finn-ish echoes with me. The sheer emotion of the post-celebration hugs. Understand that not all of Team Finn can Finn-ish together. Some have to get in earlier. Some came in later. But those who could did and for a long time pink was hugging pink. Surrounded by family. Surrounded by friends. Love can be a powerful thing.
So love means a lot to Tea, Finn. An incredible incredible amount. Love drives this thing really. We do this for those we love. Those we miss. Those who live. Those who died.
And in the process love managed to become a part of who we are. Every year I meet some incredible people. People I am proud to call my friends . And for that I am glad. Quite frankly I need that.
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