Kick cancer's ass together!

     This morning I was sitting with my usual cup of coffee watching the morning news when a commercial came on. It was a Johnson & Johnson commercial where a little girl, Emma, who has cancer, was sitting in her bed drawing pictures of her nurse and smiling. The nurse was laughing and playing with Emma, and for a moment you almost forget that you are watching these two happy lives intersect in a hospital. The nurse then had to inject Emma with medication through an IV, but he distracts her by signing a song to her that I'm sure most of us are familiar with: the name game song. You know, "Anna bana bo bana"...Anyway, my point is that even though the treatment that Emma has to go through is understandably scary for her, I was touched by how easy it was to distract her and cheer her up by singing to her, and even for a little girl of her size and age, she looked so brave and understanding to what she had to go through.

      Taylor Swift just recently had a concert in Phoenix where she sang the song "Ronan" co-written by Ronan's mother, Maya Thompson. In our current campaign we are teaming up with the Ronan Thompson Foundation which raises funds for research to treat neuroblastoma, the disease that ultimately ended Ronan's fight when he was just four years old. For those who have not seen the video of Taylor performing at her concert, I strongly urge you to go watch it. I personally had not heard the song sung in it's entirety before since it is not on Taylor's latest album, however, hearing the song once brought me to tears. The lyrics written from Maya's blog and from Taylor give us the image of an innocent little boy who likes to play with trucks, and to jump on his bed, and to run around the house without shoes on. Children like to play and dance and sing and adding the fight against cancer in their lives is something that no child should have to experience. Talking about childhood cancer is a sensitive subject, and I could write in this blog one hundred times over about the importance of getting your help to fund the research and the cure, but instead of me telling you just to go buy a Paper Clouds shirt or bag this campaign, let Ronan's words speak for themselves. If they touch your heart as much as they touched mine, I am nothing more than proud to wear one of this campaign's designs. 

"Ronan"

I remember your bare feet down the hallway

I remember your little laugh

Race cars on the kitchen floor, plastic dinosaurs

I love you to the moon and back

I remember your blue eyes looking into mine

Like we had our own secret club

I remember you dancing before bed time

Then jumping on me, waking me up

I can still feel you hold my hand, little man

And even the moment I knew

You fought it hard like an army guy

Remember I leaned in and whispered to you

Come on baby with me, we're gonna fly away from here

You were my best four years

I remember the drive home

When the blind hope turned to crying and screaming "Why?"

Flowers pile up in the worst way, no one knows what to say

About a beautiful boy who died

And it's about to be Halloween

You could be anything you wanted if you were still here

I remember the last day when I kissed your face

And whispered in your ear

Come on baby with me, we're gonna fly away from here

Out of this curtained room in this hospital grey, we'll just disappear

Come on baby with me, we're gonna fly away from here

You were my best four years

What if I'm standing in your closet trying to talk to you?

What if I kept the hand-me-downs you won't grow into?

And what if I really thought some miracle would see us through?

What if the miracle was even getting one moment with you?

Come on baby with me, we're gonna fly away from here

Come on baby with me, we're gonna fly away from here

You were my best four years

I remember your bare feet down the hallway

I love you to the moon and back