“Do what today others won’t, so tomorrow, you can do what others can’t.”-Brian Rogers Loop

Success. It’s simple enough, right? Achieve what you set out to and you will feel successful. In reality, it is not that simple. You may achieve what you set out to achieve, then not feel like a success. So then how does one accomplish a feat considered a success? It can be done by following the words of Brian Rogers Loop. If you do the things no one else is willing to do, you will be able to do the things necessary to become successful. Although, sometimes feats are doomed to be a failure instead of a success. I have had what I believe to be a fair share of feats in my life that I considered to be a possible success that were doomed to be a failure. None of these failures hurt nearly as much as the most recent one, which was a fundraiser my family did for Alzheimer’s.

This fundraiser started off great. We had a friend from a nearby nursing home named Mandy who had connections all over the city. Because of Mandy, we were being booked for radio interviews and being asked if the local news station could do a profile on our fundraiser. Since the fundraiser was getting so much publicity, we were getting more donations than expected monetarily as well as in things to sell at the fundraiser. It seemed as if the fundraiser was destined to be a hit.

And it was. The day of the fundraiser arrived and the location, which was my mother’s store, was packed. We had a few slow moments, but for the most part we had at least 15 people in the store at a time. We sold nearly all of the donated items, as well as all of the Alzheimer’s bracelets that I had made to contribute. There were also a large number of friends who just wanted to make straight donations to our cause, which was a pleasant surprise. I knew we had met our goal of $2,500, I just knew it.

And we did. We ended up raising $3,519.48, over $1,000 more than our goal. My family, as well as our friends, was so ecstatic that we decided to celebrate. So we went off to our favorite “fancy” restaurant: New York Teriyaki. We spent over an hour laughing and reminiscing the great moments of the day, which unfortunately included my passing out during a lull. We were having the time of our lives. Then the bad news came.

Mandy received a call from the nursing home she is in charge of that an Alzheimer’s patient was becoming violent, and since he was young and strong, this was bad news. Unfortunately, this news was important to my family and me because that patient was the man who inspired the fundraiser that day. That man was my 48 year old father.

My father, Chris, was the reason we had met Mandy, who talked to us about ways to cope with the decline in health of a loved one, which included a fundraiser, after we checked him into her nursing home. We liked the idea of raising money for a cause, so we decided to start making plans for a fundraiser. My father was also the reason the radio stations wanted to interview us, because people rarely hear of Alzheimer’s patients who are diagnosed at the age of 46 and decline as fast as he did. This is also why the local news station, KIMA, wanted to do a profile on our family and how we are able to cope with what was happening with my father. The donations we received were probably attributable to the fact that people felt sorry for my father’s condition. This is why the fundraiser to me was a fail, even though so many things, including the words of Brian Rogers Loop, happened that would make one think it was a success.

I had been stupidly thinking that if we raised enough money, a cure would be found soon that could save my father. But the phone call that Mandy received woke me up from this illusion. I should have known by just looking into my father’s eyes that my hope was doomed to be crushed. I should have known that my hope was doomed when I couldn’t remember the last time I had a legitimate conversation with my father. But I was blind, and the phone call showed me the truth: that the father I knew would never be able to come back. This was why I should have known that our fundraiser was doomed to be a failure, because it never would have helped my father.

“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm”- Sir Winston Churchill

But I can’t give up. Even though my father will soon be gone from this world, the father I knew is still alive in my heart, my family’s heart, and anyone else’s heart who ever talked to my father. I must follow the words of Winston Churchill and continue fighting. These things are what keep me hoping and fighting for a cure to this horrific disease, so that no one else will have to go through the failure and pain my family and I went through.

I continue to play the sport I love, basketball, through these tough times because it was my father who introduced me to it. My father also wanted me to try hard in school so that my future would be better, so I take advanced classes and do well in them. I have decided to major in Sports Management next year so that I can become a NBA team’s president of basketball operations because it will remind me of the connection my father and I shared on the basketball court.