Faces: Betty Fox

"I'm not a dreamer, and I'm not saying this will initiate any kind of definitive answer or cure to cancer, but I believe in miracles. I have to." (Terry Fox)

My hero is Terry Fox, and has been since his epical 80s Marathon of Hope, and will be to my dying day. Terry's the reason I've run every day since the 80s, and why I've never missed a single Terry Fox run for cancer.

Betty Fox, Terry's mother, has recently died. There isn't a more moving face than that of a mother framed by the even bigger one of her hero-son. Terry was a dreamer, & Betty is the reason why: the strength, selflessness & personal heroism came from her.

Between the two, mother and son, between the 'dream' and source, I can't help but also see
arise a legacy of poetry embodied in physical exertion. That's always been Terry's gift to me. The sublime symmetry of endurance and distance repeated every mile, every day, every year is the poem whose verses can be communicated only to the runner who feels the sublime in the act of running. It's been Betty's job to keep the poem visible through her own cancer research activism, keeping alive a sense of the pain and frustrations first felt by her son: she's been known to tell cancer researchers, from time to time, to "get the lead out". Something like a poet's dream turned into a body in motion makes us relive at every kilometre the pain of the one-legged marathoner.

Perhaps the hope and its realization will remain just a space for painful exertion, with a cancer cure still many years away. Perhaps for now Betty's face represents only the original of the dogged perseverance & passion of the son condemned to eternal youth. (She once quipped about the consolation of not having to share him with a wife, at least). To look carefully in Betty's eyes is perhaps to see a dimming correspondence with her son.

The beauty & mystery of mothers who give birth to heroes & then die.