For a little perspective on Sunday’s Packer game, you only needed to look for the right heroes on the field.
I got to stand next to one of them during the National Anthem.
My sister Kathy, a 12-year cancer survivor who has been stage four for the past eight years, has been wanting to hold the flag at the Packers vs. Cancer game for several seasons.
Yesterday, she got the chance.
She worried about tripping and, frankly, so did we. The treatment that is keeping her alive has led to some neuropathy in her foot, so she falls every now and then. Once, she and I were heading into Lambeau Field and she face planted right behind me. I didn’t even know she had fallen until I turned around and saw her facedown in the snow. True to form, she jumped right back up, brushed the dirt and snow from her face, and marched on into the stadium.
Like all cancer survivors, she’s really good at picking herself up from both literal and metaphorical falls.
But, we’d rather she not fall at all.
Our brother joked that, if she was going to carry the flag at halftime, Kathy shouldn’t wear our dad’s jersey in case she fell on the field.
“Don’t wear 77,” he told her. “Wear 76. Wear the Skoronski jersey.”
She’s still laughing about that advice and so is her treatment nurse.
“Don’t make me laugh when I have a needle in my hand,” the nurse told her when Kathy related that conversation.
Of course, we both wore our 77 jerseys for our game-day experience, but we also practiced some active fall evasion.
We avoided the side of the flag that pulled in favor of the side the holds. We spaced ourselves out carefully. We paid close attention to where we put our feet.
Mostly, though, we had an amazing, life-affirming time. We waved to our family and high-fived fans as we marched into the stadium carrying that big, beautiful flag.
We came thatclose to personally welcoming Aaron Jones back to Lambeau.
Then, we stood on that historical field, on which so many stories of courage and teamwork have been written, and held, unfurled, waved, snapped, bunched and carried that flag along.
Ben Tajnai performed an excellent National Anthem. At one point a gust a wind lifted the flag high and I wondered briefly if anyone had ever been carried off by an errant flag caught in a updraft. I chuckled a little at the image and then helped yank that flag back into submission.
In the end, no one tripped and Kathy and I both found the whole experience exhilarating. We headed back to our seats, wearing the new Packers Vs. Cancer hats our mom had bought us for the occasion. The colors on the hat represent various cancers — teal for ovarian (and our friend Karen), pink for breast cancer (and our friend Trina), black for skin cancer (and my father in-law Grandpa Vince) and a whole rainbow of others.
Those colors also represent survivors and we got to see plenty of those at halftime of the game yesterday. They stretched across the field grinning and waving. One of them even knelt down and proposed as they made their way off the field and, by the looks of it, his intended said yes.
We all would have loved to see a Packer victory yesterday, but it was still cool to witness some other inspiring wins against cancer, an even more relentless foe.
So, here’s to all the cancer battlers out there. We admire your courage and pray for your health.
Go Pack Go!
