Thread by @bsw5020

A warning: this is a thread, it is only a thread.

It is a thread about two guys: Pete and Brian.

It is also a thread about millions of others who are fighting races against time.

It is a thread about possibility, loss and closure.

It is a thread about life.

When @PeteFrates3 passed away last week I felt like I had lost a friend. While he was with us, Pete and I actually never met. I had seen enough videos and read enough stories to know, however, that his fight was my fight.

Young athlete.

Young father.

Driven to defy the odds.

Unwilling to simply accept the hand he was dealt.

Blessed with an amazing family that would move heaven and earth for him.

When I first heard the letters ALS come out of my doctor's mouth my first thought was a hopeful one. Not because I knew anything about it. I didn't.

It was a hopeful one because of Ice Bucket. Because of Pete and @PQuinnfortheWin.

Ice Bucket didn't cure ALS, but it opened up the possibility of a cure in ways and with a speed that previously would have been thought impossible.

It, in short, made the impossible attainable.

The ALS fight that I stepped into was thus one of possibility for the first time ever.

The hope that Ice Bucket created is, as Stephen King wrote, "a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no great thing ever dies."

The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for people.

So while the world shifted on its axis in those months, Pete's, my, and millions of others' fights remain a race against time.

So as I took in the news of Pete's death I could not help but contemplate my own mortality.

I walk and speak slower now. But I am very much alive.

That duality was at the forefront of my mind as I walked to Times Square in the rain this morning.

I thought about the race against time, the promise and hope of cures, and those who had come before me.

And then I opened the door to @SteveMadden's store and looked up.

As I looked around the room I saw hundreds of faces smiling back at me. Faces of fellow patients, caregivers, surviving family members, family and friends.

I felt the electric surge of hope and possibility. I felt the palpable sense of purpose that only community can give.

I just stood there and smiled.

I smiled because I knew that Pete's fight, Cory's fight, Sarah's fight, had become our fight.

And our fight had become part of the fight against Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and beyond.

And I saw that those fighting with us were growing by the day.

As we walked out to see 12 huge billboards lit up with the message of #CuresForAll, I felt surrounded by long time friends even though many I hugged for the first time today.

You see though we had just met we walked the same roads, and those roads had brought us together.

We didn't cure ALS, Alzheimer's or Parkinson's today but our movement became stronger, the day of cures far closer.

Our generation has been given a chance to end the fights that have taken so many from us.

We have been given this chance by those who walked before us.

We will seize that chance.

We will change the world.

Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and we will make it real.