Cancer takes a lot.
It takes time.
It takes ordinary days and fills them with appointments, bloodwork, scans, treatments and waiting.
It can take away routines you never realized were important until suddenly everything revolves around the next appointment.
It can change the way a family plans their week, the way they spend their money, the conversations around the supper table and sometimes even the way they picture the future.
I watched cancer do that to my family.
When my dad, Glen, was diagnosed, cancer became part of our lives whether we wanted it to or not.
There were things none of us could control. There were outcomes we couldn’t change. There were moments when I would have given anything to make things easier for him.
And maybe that is part of the reason these comfort bags mean so much to me now.
Because I know a blanket doesn’t cure cancer.
A pair of fuzzy socks doesn’t change a diagnosis.
A journal doesn’t make the fear disappear.
And a tube of lip balm certainly doesn’t make a treatment day go away.
But sometimes care doesn’t have to fix something to matter.
Sometimes it simply has to say:
I see you.
I thought about you.
You matter.
You aren’t walking through this alone.
That is what I want every Glen Adnam Cancer Comfort Basket to say.
Inside our bags are simple things: blankets, fuzzy socks, journals and pens, crossword books, tea, unscented lotion, lip balm, toothbrushes, mouthwash, hand sanitizer and other little comforts.
But what I see when I look at them is something completely different.
I see the businesses that believed in this idea enough to donate.
I see the people who sent money because cancer has touched their own family.
I see volunteers helping put things together.
I see messages from strangers saying, “I wish my mom would have had something like this.”
I see my dad.
And now, I see 46 bags sitting together, ready to make their way to the oncology team in Weyburn.
Forty-six people who will eventually receive a small reminder that somebody, somewhere, was thinking about them while they were going through one of the hardest seasons of their life.
And this is only the beginning.
We are already working toward more bags, more hospital partnerships and more ways to reach people throughout Saskatchewan.
What started as an idea born from grief is becoming something much bigger than I ever imagined.
There will always be a part of me that wishes this foundation never needed to exist.
I would trade every basket, every donation and every milestone to have my dad here.
But because I can’t change that part of our story, I can choose what I do with the love that is still here.
I can put it into a blanket.
Into a journal.
Into a bag.
Into a hospital room.
Into the hands of another family who needs to know someone cares.
Cancer can take a lot.
But it cannot take away our ability to show up for one another.
It cannot take away kindness.
It cannot take away community.
And it cannot take away love.
That is why this will always be more than a basket.
It is Glen’s name continuing to mean something.
It is grief being turned into kindness.
And one bag at a time, it is our way of reminding people facing cancer:
You are not alone.
— Kennedy Tessier
Founder & President
Glen Adnam Cancer Comfort Basket Foundation
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