Story
In February 2013, we got the sad news that our Granny was unwell – the Cancer had come back. She’d fought it off before but the tone of Grandad’s voice was different this time. Though no one said it aloud, we knew that we didn’t have a great deal of time left with her. It wasn’t long before she was in hospital full-time. She lost a lot of weight and was almost unrecognisable – until she laughed. Through it all, she never lost her sense of humour and kept us all smiling through one of the most difficult times in all our lives. It was during these few weeks that we decided enough was enough and signed up to our first Race for Life as a family. We had talked about it before but this gave us the final shove to do something. A few days later, just 11 short weeks after we got the news, Granny lost her battle. The men in our family also wanted to do their bit so we brainstormed other ways of fund-raising and decided to put on a quiz night in aid of Cancer Research UK. A local church donated the use of their venue, local businesses donated prizes for our raffle and the support from friends and family was overwhelming. Krissi also had 18” of her hair cut off and sent it to ‘The Little Princess Trust’ who make wigs for children with cancer. We’d never done anything like this and were very much making it up as we went along so when we did our final tally and found we’d raised £1300, we were amazed and very grateful. Although we planned to participate in the Race in future years, the quiz was only supposed to be a one-off – until we started getting requests for another. We hosted 5 quizzes annually before life got too busy and family members moved further afield but we do hope to do one again in the future. Cancer affects so many people. Granny wasn’t the only one even in our family. We’ve lost Parents, Grandparents, Great Grandparents, Cousins, friends and seen more than our fair share of pain in the eyes of loved ones. We only hope that by doing our bit, we will see a day when everybody survives cancer. The Meakings Family