I feel the need to say something about this newest Internet/Facebook
sensation. I’m really quite conflicted
about it. And my wife is even more so.
We have some “history” with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s
Disease. In early 1998, my wife’s father
was diagnosed with it. It was
heartbreaking to watch him decline, fairly quickly, over the next year and a
bit more – he died in the summer of 1999, a wasted shell of a once-robust
man. My mother-in-law never really got
over it, and his absence has been a hole in my wife’s – our – family ever since. The
first “Ice-Bucket Challenge” I remember seeing, just a couple weeks ago, was of
my wife’s niece, who was only two years old or so when her “Poppa” died, taking
up the challenge explicitly in his memory:
[LINK
– but I don’t know if Facebook videos will show up].
My wife’s family’s story is not unique, by any means. ALS is a devastating affliction, that seems
to be on the rise for whatever reason.
My wife and her siblings have supported ALS research in many different
ways through the years – ALS Walk-a-Thons, fundraisers, donations, and so
forth. And that support has pretty much
all been channeled through the ALS Association, the organization that has been
the major beneficiary of the Ice-Bucket Challenge.
