2 years after high school, one of my best friends was diagnosed with Leukemia. She fought quite the battle, and even went into remission. Unfortunately, she came out of remission and was hit quite hard. Rondi passed away shortly afterward. Thinking back on it, I’m still in shock that this happened. One day, she was here and we were hanging out on her couch trying to figure out what to do that night. The next minute, I’m surrounded by her friends and family at her “Celebration of Life”. I still have a hard time with this.
{My Dad named our team “The Bambinos”. Not everyone is pictured in this team photo.}
2 years ago, I saw a commercial on TV for the Light the Night walk. It’s a fundraiser for blood cancers. I rounded up my family and my friend Izel, and we all raised money. It turns out that we all had so much fun doing the walk that we decided to do it twice more. This year’s walk was held the last weekend in September.
The weather was beautiful. There was a free pizza and entertainment. Stories of survival and hope. When 7pm rolled around, we all lined up to start the walk. We do a 5km walk around a park here in downtown Calgary. Everyone holds balloons with little lights in them. There are three colors of balloons: Red is for supporters, white for survivors and gold for those walking in memory of a loved one who passed on. I’m happy to say that the red far outnumbered the other colors, but there was still too many gold and white balloons for my liking.
I’ve always loved the fact that we carry balloons because at Rondi’s celebration of life, we all wrote messages to her on balloons and released them at the end of the night. 
So here’s to you Rondi. You’re always in my thoughts, and I hope that I’ll continue to do Light the Night for many more years to come.
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