Wrap Party: Closing Words from Colby Marshall

By - August 23, 2013

Wow.

All I can say right now is wow.

I am truly overwhelmed by the response to this event, and I cannot thank all of the authors and readers who have participated today enough. 

If you’re reading this before midnight, there are still a few minutes to purchase The Trade on stairwaypress.com and have the proceeds go to Team Alaina.  However, if it’s after midnight and you’d like to donate to Team Alaina as a part of Trade the Day, please go to the following link and let them know you came from TRADE THE DAY: http://pages.lightthenight.org/ntx/FtWorth13/TeamAlaina.

When I was very young, my best friend’s mother (pictured left with my friend) was diagnosed with cancer.  The disease ultimately took her from her family.  When I was eleven, my grandmother succumbed to breast cancer.  Words cannot say how much I miss Nanny (pictured below right), or how much she impacted my life as a whole. Perhaps it was one of those events that determined how much I would hate cancer and what it did to people I loved, but if it wasn’t those, it was certainly the night I left my college campus and drove to a children’s hospital a few cities over, where a friend, who was supposed to be at the same college as my friends and I, was now in an elective coma, soon to slip away from us…because of blood cancer.

I remember walking into the room with him.  He was already asleep, hooked up to a billion monitors. He had just turned eighteen, so had been old enough to sign the consent forms so his parents wouldn’t have to make that awful decision.  I remember my friends and me (our Relay for Life team in his memory pictured below left) talking to him, and I remember watching his vitals speed up slightly as he heard our voices.

I remember driving back to college the next morning in the rain, not making it home for a class where absences weren’t acceptable. I remember trudging across campus in said rain to tell my advisor what had happened and why I missed the class. In a fog, I remember her telling me the best she could do to help me was to let me withdraw from the class and take it next semester, so I did. 

I also remember not caring a bit about withdrawing from that class, because a few minutes before I saw her, I’d gotten the phone call that our friend had died. I could take a class again, but I could never get those moments standing in that room back.

This day has been about so many things for me, but mostly, it has been about taking something that I’ve done and having a chance to give back to people who have helped me in some way…by being friends, mentors, readers, and everything in between. It’s been a day to look at everyone who has been touched by this disease and say that I want to help it become fiction.  I want a day when this day won’t need to exist, because we can heal people. Cure them.

Reading and writing has healed me in many ways over the years in my life.  I want it to be the same for others. 

I will post soon with the totals from the day, but for now, let me just say thank you to every person who has contributed to this day in big ways and small.  You have made this day possible, and I can’t possibly say enough.

Thank you all, and good night!