I’ve covered a lot of stories in this city over the years. Protests at City Hall, oil and gas booms and busts, community victories and heartbreaks. But some stories hit differently. They remind you why local journalism matters. This is one of them.
Marcella Sangregorio is about to do something extraordinary. On March 28, she’ll run 100 kilometres from northwest Calgary to Ghost Lake and back. She’ll carry her mother’s ashes the entire way. It’s the second anniversary of her mom’s death. It’s also a promise she made years ago that she never got to keep.
“I promised I would take her there and that never ended up happening, so now I’m fulfilling my promise,” Marcella told me. The weight of those words stayed with me long after our conversation ended.
Marcella was just one year old when her mother, Lisa Sangregorio, was diagnosed with grade 3 Astrocytoma. It’s a malignant brain tumour. Lisa’s grew behind her left eye. Doctors gave her two to five years to live. That was in 2003.
Lisa lived until Marcella turned 21. She defied every medical prediction. “My mom was such a fighter,” Marcella said. “She miraculously survived until I was 21.”
I’ve seen how this city rallies around stories of resilience. We celebrate the underdogs. We cheer for those who refuse to quit. Lisa’s story is exactly that. But it’s also a story about what happens after the fight ends. What happens when the person you love most is gone.
Marcella is now 23. She grew up with cancer as a constant companion. Not her own, but her mother’s. “Her cancer was so consistent in my life since I was a child that I grew numb to it,” she explained.
I think about what that must have been like. Being a kid in Calgary, going to school, playing with friends. But always knowing your mom is fighting something invisible and relentless. Always wondering if today might be different. Always scared.
Lisa wasn’t just her diagnosis, though. Marcella is adamant about that. “My mother was not cancer,” she said firmly. “My mom was this incredibly strong, resilient person who just would not quit, and she had a sense of humour through all of it.”
Lisa was born in Windsor, Ontario. She eventually made her way to Alberta. She studied at the University of Calgary. She ran track. She became a social worker. Marcella is following that same path now. It’s a beautiful symmetry.
“She was so simple,” Marcella said. “She loved a French vanilla from Tim Hortons, and that would make her week.”
I smiled when I heard that. There’s something deeply Calgarian about finding joy in the small things. A good coffee. A clear day. A drive out to the mountains or the foothills. Lisa loved music too. Pearl Jam especially. She leaned on it during treatments. She was cremated in her Pearl Jam t-shirt.
Marcella’s run is called “Still Alive.” It’s based on a Pearl Jam song. The layers of meaning there are impossible to miss.
Mike Sangregorio, Marcella’s father, remembers how hard Lisa fought to keep things normal. “We lived our lives as normal as possible,” he said. Even through hospital visits, seizures, and years of treatment, Lisa kept the routines. Taking the girls to school. Picking them up. Going camping as a family.
“She looked and functioned like a normal person,” Mike said. For years, people wouldn’t have known what she was carrying. That’s the thing about invisible battles. You can’t always see them. But they’re there. Every single day.
Lisa’s condition worsened three years before she died. “The decline in her health was just very steep,” Marcella said. “She went from kissing me goodbye at the door whenever I left the house to needing a wheelchair and needing help lifting her head up. It was really disheartening.”
Marcella watched her mother lose abilities that once felt ordinary. Walking. Turning her head. Simple movements became dangerous. “One wrong turn could just go horribly for her, and I was always scared for her health,” she said.
Lisa passed on March 28, 2024, in a Calgary hospital. She was surrounded by family. “I wish I told her I loved her more,” Mike said quietly.
That regret is universal. I’ve heard it a hundred times covering stories like this. We always think there’s more time. We always believe we’ll get another chance. Until we don’t.
For Marcella, this run is about expressing pain and anger. It’s about showing the perseverance her mother had. It’s about connection. “It never goes away, and it does not get easier,” she said.
Running has become Marcella’s way of honouring her mother’s memory. “I am my mom,” she said. “I share blood with my mom, and this is her running and her strength to get me through those 100 kilometres.”
Marcella isn’t new to extreme distances. In November, she completed a 90-kilometre race called The Dark 24 with Sinister Sports. She ran for roughly 21 hours in a mine shaft. I can’t even imagine that. But she did it.
Now she’s training with weights in her backpack. The equivalent of the urn’s weight. She’s preparing her body for what her heart has already committed to.
Marcella has also raised money in her mother’s memory before. About $3,000 for Janis Care Services. Another $3,000 for the Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada. Right now, she’s focused on continuing to raise funds for Janis Care Services through an online fundraiser.
“They provided exceptional end-of-life care for my mom, and their staff is considered family,” she said. “They deserve recognition and appreciation.”
Mike admits the run sounds crazy. “She’s running with her ashes, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, you’re crazy,’ but she needs this to be able to grieve and for closure,” he said. He’ll be there to support her. To help her fulfill that unkept promise.
Marcella wants people to understand something important about grief. “Grief does not need to be silent,” she said. “Grief is angry, grief is messy and grief deserves to be heard in any form that people are comfortable to express that in.”
She’s right. We don’t talk about grief enough. We don’t make space for it. We expect people to move on, to heal quietly, to get back to normal. But there is no normal after loss. There’s only what comes next.
Marcella also wants people to know how to talk to someone who’s grieving. “If I could tell people one thing on how to speak to a grieving person, it is to ask about the person who has passed away,” she said.
Don’t avoid the subject. Don’t pretend it didn’t happen. Ask about them. Remember them. Say their name. Lisa Sangregorio deserves to be remembered. Not as a cancer patient. As a mother, a wife, a social worker, a Pearl Jam fan, a fighter.
I’ve lived in Calgary long enough to know this city has a big heart. We show up for each other. We support local causes. We rally around people doing hard things for good reasons. Marcella’s run is exactly that.
On March 28, she’ll lace up her shoes. She’ll secure the urn. She’ll start running. From northwest Calgary to Ghost Lake and back. One hundred kilometres. Every step a promise kept. Every kilometre a tribute. Every breath a connection.
“I promised I would take her there,” Marcella said. And she will.
