Wendy Kadziorski

Uncle G

Why I'm Walking

I've signed up for the Heart & Stroke Walk for Heart. Ninety kilometres. I want to tell you why.

I'm walking for my uncle.

Twenty-eight years ago he was given a new heart. That sentence takes two seconds to read and it took a stranger's family the worst day of their lives to make it true. He has never forgotten that. I don't think a day has gone by that he hasn't thought about it.

What people don't always see is what came after. A transplant isn't a finish line. It's a contract, and he has kept his side of it every single day since. The pills, on time, without fail. The appointments. The bloodwork. The endless small refusals: the food he'd rather eat, the drink he'd rather have, the trip he'd rather take, the risk he'd rather ignore. Twenty-eight years of doing the careful thing when nobody was watching and nobody would have blamed him for slipping.

That's not luck. That's discipline. Most of us couldn't hold to it for twenty-eight days or weeks, let alone years. 

So the reason I'm walking is simple. I want him to know we noticed. I want him to know that all those quiet, unglamorous choices he made added up to something the rest of us got to enjoy, which is more time with him. Birthdays. Holidays. Ordinary days.  Every one of them was earned.

Ninety kilometres is nothing next to that. It's a few weeks of putting one foot in front of the other. But it's something I can do, and the money goes to research that gives other families the same extra years ours got.

If you can give, please do. Whatever amount is right for you. And if you know my uncle, tell him. Tell him you're proud of him. He'd never say it out loud, but I think he'd like to hear it.

I'm walking because of him. Thank you for helping.