For the second year in a row, she has organized a team for her local Walk to End Alzheimer's and asked me to join. I'm asking you to make a donation to our team, every dollar matters in funding the research that will, one day, produce the first survivor of this disease.

Mary Ellen has named her walk team after the mantra she has adopted as she faces this disease: Every Day is a Gift.

Let me tell you a little bit about our friendship. We've been friends since second grade! Elementary, middle and high school friends and we even ended up going to the same college. Of course we were in each other's wedding parties (she was my Matron of Honor); I'm the proud Godmother to her daughter and she is Godmother to one of my sons; we laughed and encouraged each other through the hectic years working and raising our families; and through events like loss of parents. You get the picture; this is lifelong friendship with all the happy and the sad that this roller coaster called Life offers.

It has been a lot of years so you can imagine all the talking we've done, a good amount on landlines no less! When we get together our husbands wonder how there is enough oxygen. (Should I mention her husband had my mother as a third grade teacher? Lifelong is not an exaggeration here!) We've shared some stuff. But nothing really prepares you for the phone call when she bravely shared her diagnosis of Early Onset Alzheimer's Disease. Mary Ellen trusted me with her diagnosis even as she was and is still figuring out what it means for every day, and for the future.

Please join me in honoring and offering hope to Mary Ellen and all the others who face this diagnosis with tenacity, humor, and reality. Thanks for reading, thanks for your support. Truly, Every Day is a Gift.