The Pilot News - CCHS student honors mother’s life through Relay

And she should know: she shared her mother, Christina Diaz’s final months in 2005, after Diaz’s five-year battle with breast cancer.
Banfield shared her story Jan. 14 at the high school with fellow students and teachers as part of CCHS’ 2010 Relay for Life kick-off rally, which recruited students to support and participate in the April 16, all-night Relay, to be held at the Culver Academies track and football field.
Banfield says she became involved in the event – which raises money for the American Cancer Society towards fighting the disease – after being asked by CCHS Principal Albert Hanselman and Counselor Brenda Sheldon to be a communications correspondent for the school, networking with student Relay organizers at Culver Academies. Banfield has already become familiar with some of those students as part of CYCO (Culver Youth Community Organization), which unites students from both schools towards community service projects. She says she was heavily involved in planning the CCHS Relay rally and during discussion about who should speak at the event, it occurred to her to share her own story.
The rally, Banfield says, was many students’ first time learning details of the passing of her mother, even though some had heard it through the grapevine.
“So many years later, it’s not new to me, but it is for some people,” she says. “A lot of my friends didn’t even know how I described it in my speech.”
She says attending last year’s Relay event (she couldn’t make it to the first Culver Relay in 2008), besides her speech last month, was another means of closure for her.
And her words have had a positive impact on others she didn’t foresee. One fellow CCHS student and Facebook friend, she notes, opened up to her about the loss of her own father, while another student told Banfield she “had to tell” her own mother about the speech the following morning.
“Even my boyfriend said, after I opened up to him about my story, since then he’s made a point to get closer to his mom. It’s heartwarming.”
Cancer statistics, Banfield told her CCHS audience, are anonymous. “The reality check comes when cancer really affects you.”
Her mother was diagnosed with cancer in 2000, Banfield told the audience, and Nicolette and her older sister “took in stride” a new lifestyle for their mother, which included hair loss from chemo therapy, medications, and other changes.
“She was very positive person,” recalls Banfield. “Attitude can help you so much. I told her story (at the rally) and said, ‘She’s why I go to Relay.’
Her mother’s cancer was in remission for six months, she says, before its return. Doctors tried new treatments, but in the end told Diaz she had just six months to live.
“She sat me and my sisters down and said, ‘I want to tell you they’ve given me this six month timeline.’ That was hard. But it felt so much longer; we really stretched that time.”
Her mother, says Banfield, got to spend Nicolette’s twelfth birthday with her before her June, 2005 death.
“When she would get sick, even with a cold, she would say, ‘Your card (that you made) makes me better.’ It’s that positive mindset. She said laughter is the best medicine…that’s one of the big things she taught me, that positivity.”
The conclusion of her speech, she adds, was for students to “Go to Relay to celebrate a life. I go to celebrate hers.
“(I) know from this experience not to take one single thing for granted, and not to leave one thing open or unresolved if you were to never see that person again. It’s a terrible thought, but it does make relationships better.”
And in the years since her mother’s passing, Banfield has leaned a great deal on her father.
“He’s always been there,” she explains. “Right at the beginning, when it was still fresh learning of her death, my dad was in the kitchen. I’m really short, and he got down on his knees and hugged me. I will always remember that. He’s like a pillar…he’s a single parent with two daughters (and) he’s taking it well. He makes time for us and for his friends.”
Banfield also praises the efforts of CCHS teacher Mike Schwartz, battling cancer himself (as reported recently in the Culver Citizen) but still working to help students like Banfield progress in CCHS’ Business Professionals of America and its competitions (several local students are headed to the state BPA competition later this year in Indianapolis).
She says she understands some of what Schwartz — who also spoke at the CCHS Relay kickoff — is going through with his treatments because of her mother’s situation.
“After my speech he came up and gave me a hug,” she recalls. “He’s taking it in stride as well. He told us at (the BPA District competition last month), ‘I’d like to be there more for you guys.’ I think (he has) a little bit of guilt, but it’s our job now to show him he really is helping us.”
As April and Relay for Life approach, Banfield is pouring her positive energy and love of her mother into fund-raising and student recruiting efforts for this year’s Relay. She was deeply moved, she says, by last year’s event, especially the Luminaria lap of the event. That lap involved paper bags holding candles in honor of a loved one touched by cancer being paraded around the darkened track. She and her sister made a luminary in honor of their mother, with the words, “Angel babies” — a nickname her mother gave her daughters even into their teens — written on the bag.
“Appreciate (what you have),” emphasizes Banfield, “go to Relay, and have fun….even if no one in your family has been affected. You don’t have to go just because you know someone (with cancer). Even if you don’t know the person you might be saving, that money goes to research and helping others.”
She says students were “signing up like crazy” for Relay for Life following the CCHS rally, and she hopes the fund-raising goes even better this year than the previous two.
“Reach for the skies for this year,” adds Banfield. “There’s never too much.”