I’ve decided to highlight each of our team members this year in a separate blog post to help everyone who cares about Gary get to know the Gang…and hopefully to inspire you to help them fundraise. These are friends and family members who supported us in so many different ways throughout the years and have helped us cope with this disease in more ways than they know.
Today, we visit the O’Donnell’s. Gary met Drew and Lissa in that first week of college and by our second year, Lissa and Gary became roommates (even though they went to different colleges) and Drew basically moved in. These two people have been such a staple in Gary’s life – extending their love to those he loves, frowning on people who hurt him (like that time I broke up with Gary in college) and embracing me, Oscar and Laura as their own family. They also contributed to our decision to go ahead and start a family – 6 years after we got married.
When Gary was diagnosed, we had been married almost 2 years and had discussed starting a family but also really wanted to figure out WHAT THE HELL was going on with Gary (because he had been experiencing noticeable symptoms with multiple different diagnosis for the previous 18 months). After his diagnosis, we took that first year to let it settle in, learn about what this meant for our life and deal with our grief around the diagnosis. By 2011 we decided we wouldn’t have kids. MS is a serious and terrible disease with very little ability to predict how it will look and is progressive in nature, regardless how slow it is. Gary wanted to enjoy every moment that he had and I knew I’d one day be a carepartner focused on my husband. So that was it – no kids.
We came to terms with the fact that we could just be “really important people” to other kids in our life. We even talked about it in that way. Gosh, we were silly. We could become godparents and the “favorite” aunt/uncle and we could support our friends by giving them a child-free weekends and send our niece and nephew gifts galore from a distance. The kids would LOVE us and we’d go to their graduations and join their parents on the lawn to take prom pics and would get a shout-out in their yearbook tribute. Maybe they’d talk to us about the things they couldn’t talk to their parents about. Right!?!?!
And so we set out to do that. We started offering to watch Christopher (Drew and Lissa’s first born) for weekends (a few) and Gary and I got to relieve our friends while also becoming “really important people” to this little person in our lives.
That continued….then, Drew and Lissa asked me to become the Godmother for Elizabeth (their second born). Ding Ding! I have achieved “Really important person” status in the life of a baby who is not even born yet and Gary and I were honored and humbled and excited. And it felt like everything was falling into place. Some of our best friends had invited us to be in the lives of their children in a very special way.
You know there’s more to the story because we actually DO have kids. But, before we proceed I want to say THIS is how the O’Donnell’s show up. They have extended themselves in immeasurable ways to help incorporate us in their lives and support our emotional needs.
And so, those weekends of practice with Christopher, and eventually Elizabeth helped us realize we could probably actually parent together. And maybe we wanted to try this out on our own….and along came O and then, L.
So there we went – from the #TeamNoKids to #TeamKids and we are so thankful to Drew and Lissa for inviting us into their family in such an intimate way and also excusing us of all the hopes and dreams we had of being Very Important People as we had our own kids and got a little busier than we had ever expected.
This year – Christopher is also joining the walk. He’s wanted to since he was old enough to understand what his mother was doing and we’re so excited to have him join us. Actually, Christopher has been helping the Smith’s since our wedding day! Lissa was pregnant at our wedding and when the chartered bus no-showed to take us to the hotel, our DD was Lissa! Thank goodness she was pregnant and able to drive (Thanks, Christopher!)
This family keeps showing up. They are some of our favorite people. Goodness, we are so lucky.
Gary's Gang 