Death sentence

The park is packed with kids. Just a few meters away, i can see a young mom with a baby maybe six months old. They are lying on a blanket next to each other and the mom is taking a selfie. They look so happy. It’s painful how happy they are. I remember coming in this park with you. It should be us today… it should be us on that blanket. I still wonder why it had to be you. There’s so many kids around me, running, playing, shouting, crying. They come in all sizes and colors and they have all kind of different names. But there’s one name i know i’ll never hear.

Today is a hard day. One year ago on april 24th, 2014 we received your death sentence. You just had another seizure in the morning, and it took forever to bring you back. When you were finally stable, our doctor asked to talk to us in the other room. And then he said, Soley is dying. It was not the first time i discussed my baby’s death with a doctor. But it was the first time with him. I had always dismissed the other’s opinions as they never believed in Soley to begin with. But he believed in her. He knew her. He genuinely care for her. He fought for her with us. And as he was talking i could tell he was in pain. In the past months we had tried everything on the tumor. Doxorubicin, Vincristin, Ifosfamide, Cisplatin, Etoposide, Endoxan, and our last hope, Methotrexate. None of them was the cure we had pray for. Of course we could have tried radiation. We should have tried radiation, and i throw that back at him with as much anger as despair. He looked at me with sadness and i don’t remember his words exactly, but i understood that it was too late. I stopped talking.

In a way, i always knew you were going to die. But i could never accept it. Even then, i chose fighting mode over waiting mode. It’s just easier to survive that way. I asked you for another miracle, and you gave me one. You made an extraordinary recovery. The very next day, you were already smiling. We kept on with chemo… pretending it could buy you time. But really it was to buy me hope.

How i miss you baby. How i continue to miss you, every day. And how this world is broken without you.