If you don't have any, borrow some. Doesn't matter if they're 27 months old or 27 years old. Look in their eyes, hold their heads in your hands and tell them how much you love them. They don't hang around forever you know.

Lydia Borek had a baby boy, but not nearly long enough. He died when he was 18. It was cancer. He fought hard but it made him weak. He was brave but it made him scared. It took him without mercy, rolling over him like what surfers call a closeout set. In the end he got held down way too long. It's not fair. He'd be married now, maybe. Maybe he'd have kids of his own. His death left a big hole in a lot of lives. A hole like that, it never fills up. People learn to step carefully around it, which makes it easier, but it never mends, never fills in.

A lot of times that's where it ends. But sometimes death is where something begins. When Brendan Borek died people weren't content to mourn. They wanted to do something. Had to do something. And did. They created the Brendan Borek High Tides Memorial Fund. Where there was once nothing there is now a group of people - an organization, not a bureaucracy - that helps families in Cape May County whose children are fighting cancer.

It helped that Borek was a surfer. It gave people a vehicle. It was natural to wrap the spirit of surfing around the fund.

On Saturday there were thousands of people on the 30th Street beach here. A few were tourists, but most were there to help the fund. There was a surf contest, a big one. Later there was a beef and beer dinner. In between there was a lot of hugging, some crying and a ton of good feelings. There on the beach you could see young, hardcore, supposedly bulletproof surfers - who at their age really usually aren't thinking about much besides how hard they can go frontside - and there they were helping and thinking and giving and even laying off the attitude. Yes, there was a spirit, a feeling, a warmth -- and surfers aren't always known for their warmth. At one point they paddled out to form a huge circle just past the break. They held hands for a moment. Some threw fresh flowers in the water. Then they cheered. On the beach were children who survived cancer, and parents and brothers and sisters of some who didn't. It was the most bittersweet of days.

"He didn't do anything big -- he was only 18 when he died -- but he left a lot behind," said Brendan Borek's mother Lydia, who has shown the kind of strength that should make good surfers envious.

In the 10 years since Borek's death the group has raised about $500,000. Because the group is small, it's flexible. It gives money to families who have to travel to Philadelphia for treatment. And when one parent has to quit work to handle things, it's there too, helping pay the late rent or mortgage or the electric and gas bills. There are so many ways a family gets hurt when it's fighting for the life of a child, and the fund tries to help in just as many ways. When the kids get ready to go back to school, all the children in the family may get certificates to shop at local stores. The fund has a social worker who knows the territory. People from the fund can hook up recently diagnosed families with those who have gone through it all and come out on the other side with a child who lived. Or sometimes not. They might pay for a dentist to help heal the wounds left by treatment. They might pay for tutoring, so a child can go back to her class.

These may sound like little things if a family is fighting for its child's life. They're not.

Donna Selinsky and her husband Chris, who live in Dennis Twp., have a daughter who is 7. Her name is Stephanie. She had a brain tumor. One day she started vomiting, next thing they knew she was in the hospital and they were hitting the cancer with everything they had. It's in remission now but she'll never get her hair back. Before, at age 4, she knew every state on the map. Now she has the intelligence of a 1-1/2-year-old. The radiation damaged her brain. She's having mini-strokes. She can't dress herself or brush her teeth. She is also happy and enjoys being around people.

"We're very very lucky to have had this much time with her," said Donna Selinsky.

They also feel very lucky to have encountered the Brendan Borek Fund.

"Financially we probably would have been sunk," she said. "And we probably would have been divorced. They have helped us tremendously. We would have lost our house if it weren't for them. It's incredible. They helped with food coupons, they give baskets of food at the holidaysŠ I just can't say enough good things about that organization."

In the hall just off the beach was Sue Paz and her daughter Samantha of Wildwood Crest, who has come back completely from leukemia. It wasn't easy, the trips to Philly, the treatments, the pain, the medication that made her sick. Herešs a single mom who commuted from Avalon to Children's hospital on an almost daily basis, who had her child come home for Christmas with a feeding tube in her nose. The fund helped with the money. The fund helped with the pain, the emotional pain, too.

Basically, she said, she and her daughter had been crying from the moment they got near the beach on Saturday.

"It's just so hard," she said. "We were one of the more fortunate families but it was just a struggle. When you have a child who is sick you find out what people are all about."

Also in the hall was Eileen Johnston of Seaville, Her daughter Jennifer, who's 25, was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease when she was 13. It was her illness that brought Johnston together with Lydia Borek. They founded the fund. Today they are the two arms on its body.

On Saturday Borek was very busy. That's not unusual. She is the great force behind the fund, and she never stops pushing, 12 months a year. Many others help of course, and on Saturday alone there were hundreds of volunteers. The food was donated. The labor was volunteer. By the end of the day they figured they would raise about $60,000. In one day. In Brendanšs name. Oh, and there were waves, chest-high, set up by a light offshore wind and with the promise of a bigger swell on the horizon. The water was warm, the sky blue. Just as Brendan would have liked it. One swell fades, another is born.