My mom died of complications from breast cancer in 1999. Thanksgiving Day, to be exact. My grandmother, some nine months from her 100th birthday, died two days before Christmas the following month. My grandmother had had a long wonderful life. My mom, born in 1928, was still very young in comparison and, so, it was more sad to me. The real tragedy, however, is that this dreadful disease had claimed one more to add to its far too numerous victims.
When I first joined Second Life, I started hearing about RFL. What’s that I asked? Relay for Life, came the response. Then I found out it benefited the American Cancer Society which had been so good to my mom. Of course, I had to get involved.
Relay for Life is Second Life’s major charity fundraiser. There are ongoing events throughout the year. Stores have storewide sales for a day with profits going to RFL. Some people, me included, create products, whose proceeds go to RFL in perpetuity. There are concerts and fairs. I participated in one fair where I built a Honeybee ride to raise money. Huge prim roses towered over the event field while the honeybees looped around them. It was enough to make anyone go, “Wheeeeeeeeeeee!”
At the big fairs, there are people who run, as in real life, along paths that wind through areas where artists and builders have joined to create wonderful prim environments as the runners, wearing pedometers which track the leg movements of the avatar, raise money with each step.
The last big fair had wondrous recreations of Lord of the Rings and The Wizard of Oz (replete with tornado and dropped house on the unfortunate witch with the ruby slippers). This year will be no different and you will have the opportunity to enjoy these amazing visualizations, partake of special products, and all you need do is share some lindens for life. That life may be gone before us or someone in the struggle or, all goodness willing, preventing someone from losing another loved one. So when you see the RFL sign in Second Life, join us in the fight against cancer.
Oh, and yes, that is me with my mom on the day I came home from the hospital. I found the picture after she died and remains one of my favorite pictures. For all the misunderstandings, shortcomings and disappointments there were between us, I can look at that picture and know that there was also perfect love between a mother and her newborn child. Thanks, Mom.
~elfa and namaste
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