The one in which I have absolutely nothing witty to say

My second cousin Aimee was on Nightline last night in a feature about her life with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), and how she's preparing her kids for her death. I never spent that much time with Aimee; she is twelve years older than I, and she was off doing important things like a studying abroad in Paris and living with her husband, Jim, in a suburb of Chicago. She had this gorgeous wavy red hair, and a ready smile, and my most striking childhood memory of her is when she offered to help me with one of those puzzles where the two circles link together and you have to figure out how to slide one out from the other, and as I sat on the floor and looked up at her joking with her siblings as she played with the puzzle, I thought I would probably never again be in the presence of someone so unassailably exotic and fabuous.

Aimee and I, of course, grew older and as I transitioned into Nerdy Teenager with Unfortunate Hair and Glasses, she turned into A Bona Fide Cool Mom. She and her husband and her kids would drop in on my grandmother every few years, and we'd engage in the ritual of the extended family; the Chamerniks would crowd together on my grandma's divan, and we'd assume our customary places in the armchairs and against the walls and we'd pass around pictures and admire Nick and Emily as they played on the floor and eat some sort of fried poultry and cream pie and then we'd all agree to see one another again in a year, or two years, or whenever.

The last time I saw Aimee, though, was about four years ago when she was pregnant with her third child, Alex. No one said anything, but we all knew something was wrong. Her speech wasn't clear, and her magnificent smile seemed somehow dulled and off balance. The family gossip mill started churning, and eventually the word was out that Aimee had been diagnosed with ALS. We shook our heads and were saddened in the way that semi-casual observers tend to be, and then I lost track of her and Jim and the kids for four years.

But Aimee's been busy since then! It's been nearly 66 years since Lou Gehrig died, and ALS unfortunately hasn't reached cause celebre status like AIDS or cancer, because it doesn't currently have a Magic Johnson or a Katie Couric to put a powerful and resonant face on the disease. As with other auto-immune diseases of its kind, scientists are perpetually close but no cigar in finding treatment or a cure for it, and no one seems very motivated to give it enough attention or money to advance the progress. So Aimee decided she would be the face of ALS, and she's been writing to newspapers and magazines and appearing on television to appeal for support. I found her blog semi-accidentally a few months ago, and I visit it regularly now. Her writing is simultaneously so hilarious and so exquisitely painful to read that I inevitably end up in tears one way or the other by the time I'm done. I also found out that she's a rabid Cards fan, so of course that reinforced my estimation of her uber-coolness (even if she did marry Jim, who has equal passion for the Cubs).

Anyway, I know I haven't written very much about weight loss in the last few weeks, and I apologize if you're coming here and getting disappointed at not getting to read about how big my ass is, or whether garlic or cheddar croutons have more calories. I promise we'll be back to regularly scheduled programming next week. I just wanted to share the Nightline clip and Aimee's page with you, to show you how beautiful and articulate and strong she is, and how much ALS sucks for not letting her stay in this world for very much longer.

Nightline video clip from ABC

Aimee's website

The ALS Association