Jon Lehre - In Memory and Honor

 

It took 326 strangers to help me get over the death of my mother. In 2008, I didn't know much about cancer. But when my mom was diagnosed with colon cancer, stage IV, I found out that cancer doesn't have a stage V. She had a couple of options. She could get chemo, she could get radiation, she could have surgery to remove part of her colon. I said, “Hey, mom, that means you still have a semicolon.” [audience laughter] It was just a silly, dumb thing to say, but it made her laugh and calmed down the mood a little bit. 

 

We put in for the long haul. My sister and I would take her to chemo, but we felt powerless, kind of hopeless. Then we heard about Relay For Life, which is a global fundraiser where people walk around a track raising money for cancer research. We went to it in Santa Rosa in August, and there were over a thousand people there. We made friends. We raised money. We actually felt like we were part of something. When the sun set, they did this slideshow of people's faces set to music. And each face had two words next to it. If they had died from cancer, it said “In memory.” And if there were a survivor, it said “In honor.” When my mom's face came up and it said, “In honor,” I actually had some hope. Maybe she would survive. 

 

But the next year, she was too weak to go to Relay. When her face came up and it said “In honor,” I was afraid that might not be the case next year. And then, something odd happened. During the slideshow, a song came on that just felt wrong. It just didn't fit the tone. Or, as my sister said, “That song? Oh, hell no.” [audience laughter] I began to worry, what if the next year the wrong kind of song came up? Just not understanding what the music should be. A song like Yesterday, or Stairway to Heaven or Smells Like Teen Spirit. I couldn't risk it. [audience laughter] The odds were long, but still I felt like I needed to jump in there. I volunteered rather aggressively to do the slideshow myself [audience laughter] for August of 2010. Then mom passed away in February of 2010. 

 

After her funeral, I took all of the emotions as a good Irish boy, and I shoved them down deep and I shut myself off from the world. I even forgot about doing the slideshow until I started getting these emails in July, “Hi, John, thanks for doing this. This is a picture of my wife, In memory.” “Hi, John. This is my dad, In honor.” They just started coming in, one after the other, one after the other. Every age, every ethnicity, every relationship. It's my aunt, In memory. My uncle, In honor. I didn't cry until the 12th photo. It was a four-year-old boy, In memory. 

 

As I started to put all of these faces into the slideshow, all of that emotion I buried so deep just came bubbling out with each face, and I started finally to heal. I put music to it. And then, at Relay, we did the slideshow, and I said, I will never ever do this again. [audience laughter] So, this is my ninth year [audience laughter] [audience applause] 

 

Because I realized it wasn't about me. It was about the people watching it, and seeing their loved ones, and seeing what they needed to see to heal and it building the fuel to their fire to keep walking and raising money and trying to find a cure. So, every year, I do the slideshow, every year I cry, every year I heal and every year, I put in one specific photo right in the middle of that slideshow, the very last one, my mother, In memory.