The community of Marshall reacted with love, compassion and warmth to the recent death of 14-year-old Carter Boerboom, who was battling cancer until his passing. And Marshall lost another young life to the disease more recently when Beret Rysdahl lost her fight against metastatic breast cancer Thursday. Rysdahl was young, too, only 27 years old. She had just celebrated five years with the Schwan Food Co.

Rysdahl’s obituary says she “lived big and loved big, living with passion and purpose.” She recently spent time on a Habitat for Humanity mission with her brother in Sri Lanka. By all accounts, she lived a fun and outgoing life with optimism and enthusiasm. She was crazy about life. A source of strength for so many, Rysdahl will no doubt be missed by everyone she touched. And in all reality, when cancer steals people so young, it affect us all, whether we knew the person or not.

Sadly, this disease is continuing its summer rampage through the community of Marshall – first Boerboom, then Rysdahl and Ted Deutz on the same day last week. They join a long list, of course, and it’s growing too long for our liking. Most of the time when someone succumbs to cancer only a small number of people – family and close friends – ever realize how much that person will be missed. Deaths of a select few – like Deutz, like Boerboom – are more publicized because they were well-known, or, in Boerboom’s case, because the news seems to sting more when it’s a kid; but in the end, the lives of everyone who has lost to cancer – and those who battle on – must be celebrated whole-heartedly.

We can only hope that when the victim does carry some celebrity for whatever reason, it shines the light even brighter on the battle against cancer and further strengthens our resolve to beat it once and for all.

Next year’s Relay for Life in Lyon County will surely be a memorable one, if for no other reason than some of the lives that have recently been lost attracted a whole region’s attention. But we still must pay attention to other families, those more non-descript ones in the shadows, whose members are silently fighting their own fight after a loss at the hands of cancer. There are so many of them. That’s why we encourage everyone to get involved in some way in your county’s fight against cancer in the coming months. Volunteer, donate money – anything you can do. Anything.

Rysdahl’s and Deutz’s deaths remind us that cancer is an unyielding beast, rarely wilting despite our best efforts to crush it. Boerboom’s death reminds us that the beast has no mercy for the young – one more reason why this is a battle we have no choice but to win.