I Cry For Happy, I Cry For Sad

I am crying this morning; not a lot, just those little tears that scrunch up in the corners of your eyes, wanting to let go, wanting to hold on, the kind of tears that a blink cannot release, but that hang there, slowly making there way onto my cheekbones. This morning my tears have two causes, reasons to cry at complete ends of the spectrum; cry for happy, cry for sad.

This morning the online ALS community was hit with another loss, as it is almost every day. A young man named Louis DiGiacomo died last night. He was just 29 years old when diagnosed, and now, 38 months later, he is gone. He leaves behind a beautiful baby daughter who will never know the joys of her Dad. He leaves behind a grieving family, a mother who lost a son too soon, brothers, sisters, grandparents, his fiance. ALS came to him early and took him young.

This morning the ALS community in Canada is hearing the news about what will happen with the money raised by the Ice Bucket Challenge, how $20 million will be poured into research, continuing and building on efforts to find treatments, and ultimately a cure; how $6 million will be distributed to ALS Societies across the country to support and aid those of us with this awful disease. Today we saw the first of what will be many concrete steps arising out of the generousity of Canadians, and people around the world.

I am stricken with sadness to see even one more person die from ALS. We will all die from something, someday; ALS is a particularly nasty way to die. It attacks young and old, rich and poor, powerful and weak. It shows no mercy, has no treatments, no cure. It creeps through your body in nimble sublety, wreaking havoc in tiny steps.

I am excited, happy to see what will happen thanks to the Ice Bucket Challenge, happy to see this continued focus on research into treatments and a cure. I am thrilled to see so much going back to the local Societies, to help those of us struggling with the emotional, social, and financial impacts of this black hearted killer. I look foreward to a day when this will be a "used to" disease, on that people used to get, one that used to have no treatments or cure.

The results of the disease are happening daily to people all around us. The results of the research will take many months and years, too many for me, but results will come. I cry for happy, I cry for sad.