Together We Dance

I don't mean this in any way to sound like an advertisement. These are the bracelets I just got in the mail that I ordered from zumba.com. I also got a really cool tank top!
http://www.zumba.com/en-US/togetherwedance

Together We Dance is the new Zumba fundraising campaign to raise money for MDA Augie's Quest, an organization raising money to fund research into cures for ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). My $20 purchase ($7.50 roughly donation), is certainly not going to cure ALS, but it's a gesture.I'm totally game to help support most any worthy cause, but this particular one is close to my heart. My grandpa died of ALS in 2008. It kind of makes me smirk in a morbid way that their catchphrase is "together we dance" because anyone who knows anything about ALS knows how impossible it would be to dance, let alone perform everyday tasks. It's a really heartbreaking disease. My grandpa was the most stubborn, fiercely independent person you could ever meet, but I watched him slowly lose the ability to walk, talk, and eventually breathe. That's not even the worst part. A similar thing happens with Alzheimers, but they are unaware. ALS is cruel. It leaves your mind totally intact while your muscles betray you one by one. I don't want you to picture a helpless man, though. His courage throughout the entire battle was amazing- he did as much as he could by himself until the very last. It killed him having to accept help with something as simple as cutting up his dinner. I don't mean to be graphic, but if there's an underfunded, underpublicized disease out there, it's ALS. Unfortunately, I don't do enough to help change that. So here's my first step. May a thing as simple as a rubber bracelet be a reminder to me to never forget- both my grandpa as he was before this disease...and the effort to find a cure.