Cancer Survivor Park and My Silent Angel

During my run on Saturday, I ran past the Cancer Survivors Park.  I passed by this all the time when we used to take the kids bike riding along the San Diego Harbor.  As many times as I have passed it, I never have taken the time to walk through it and really appreciate why it is there and what it stands for.  

My new mantra this year is to not forget to make my days count.  It is so easy to get caught up in the run, that I miss what is around me. So, on the way back, I stopped my GPS, took a moment to walk through the arches, read the plaques and say a prayer for my friend Marsi, who lost her battle with breast cancer this last summer.

The park is in such a random spot, between the airport and a hotel.  Not easily seen or accessible unless you are on the bike / running path it flows through.  As random and out of the way it is, honestly, it is really a peaceful location.  Quiet, full of sunshine and hope.

I did not get a picture of the walk ways between the fountain.  On either side of the fountain are two walk ways.  Each pillar in the walk ways has a motivational cancer related saying on them.  Many of them also life related.  So regardless of what you are fighting, they make you stop and think and encourage.

As much as I believe our mind controls our body, I also firmly believe that God has a plan for us and sometimes, no matter how strong our mind is, that plan is so much greater than what we can control.  I also believe that regardless of what we fight, we have to have our sights on the future, the good that life gives.

Sometimes it is simple words (and maybe bird poop) that are the most meaningful.

These motivational plaques are all over the park.  I found these to be the most meaningful.  Knowing that this is a Survivors Park, some of the plaques to me were hard to accept.  Watching Marsi die was heartbreaking.  She fought, like these plaques tell you to.  She fought hard, but in the end, she did not survive.  I had a few moments when I lost the meaning of what this park stood for.  In all its good, it did not stand for the ones that we have lost to this disease.  

I wish I had gotten a better picture of this.  In the middle of the arches are these windows with statues of people of all ages running through and a fountain at the bottom.  It is so amazing in real life, not in crappy iphone picture life. The sense I got from this is that after the battle, we walk through a doorway filled with hope and dreams.  Into our new life.

This park was at about mile 8.5 for me.  I was tired and a bit pissy.  But I was running, I was healthy, I was fighting to finish a run that many people never even have the chance to make.  It put my life in perspective and at that moment made me stronger, prouder and so grateful for what I have.  Marsi was one of my biggest supporters of all my crazy running antics.  She was such an inspiration and although she did not survive, I can say with all honesty that she had such a Positive, Mental Attitude during her walk with cancer and in her life.