The Sock Story
Thursday, October 25, 2012
By: Bonnie Smith

What it means to get involved with Relay, and how the focus can bring a family together.

In the spring of 2012, my sisters and I were working hard to fundraise for the Canadian Cancer Society's Relay for Life in Whitecourt. It was the one thing that kept my sister, Vickie, going every day. It kept her fighting. She was in her fourth year of her fight with cancer. She wanted to raise money to make a difference.

She was not well.

She didn't tell us what it all meant.
We knew it was coming. We just didn't know how soon.

We hosted an amazing fundraiser on Facebook in April. The day the event began, she was so ill with the disease that she couldn't register where things were at. She was in hospital. Cancer had built a home in her brain. It would take her ability to walk, and kick the shit out of her speech.

We made the April Auction the focus of everyday. We built what she hoped for. It was her crazy idea and it soared! It was amazing! People came together in every sense of the word, from all across the province to make a dream come true! Once again, she rose up over the hurdles that life had given her, she watched day and night from her chair, the progress that grew. She had hoped for a couple thousand, and we sealed the deal at $10,000.00 before the end of April.
We believed that this type of excitement could keep her going! The thrill of it, the urging every day to get up and see what was waiting for her. No sooner did the Auction end, that my older sister had dreamt up another fundraiser for our team; something to keep us going, and shooting for that mission.

"Socking it to Cancer" was born. Gennie canvassed any store / shop / online business that she could to donate socks to Cancer. And they did. The socks came from large specialty companies. They came from Walmart. They just kept coming! We set up anywhere we could with our banners, and our boxes of socks. No one sold them like Gennie. Over $1000 in socks was sold, before mid-May... and we still had plenty to go.

It was May 20th when my sister called our family together for the first time and explained that they were closing her file at the Cross Cancer Institute. She would be considered Palliative care. This was the end of the treatments. It's honestly the worst thing I have ever heard in my life.

She never went into hospital. She never burdened us with the details, or the caretaking. She passed away in the early morning of May 22nd.

Shortly after the funeral, my sister Gennie called and said she didn't know what to do with the socks. They represented the love we had for our sister. It was never about the money. They represented that we believed that as long as we were fundraising, she was watching, happy, excited, and well. She never lead us to believe different.

But now, we knew different. We were done. She asked what to do. I told her that they needed to be shared. Given to anyone who may need them, enjoy them, or want them. We distributed them to places we thought might reach good people. In the hopes to give back to the places that gave so much, in a time that we needed it.
-The best part was that my sister Vickie always LOVED socks. <3