Please keep the families of these children in thoughts and prayers.

Vincent lost his battle with Rhabdomyosarcoma this month. This is the second child that this family has had to bury. You can read about him at the link to Annabella's Garden I have posted under links. This is a foundation established by his parents as they stab back at pediatric illnesses despite the loss of two of their children.

Gatlin lost his battle with Ewing's Sarcoma this month. Before Gatlin died, he organized a fundraiser for pediatric cancer research and raised almost 15,000 dollars and was featured on Fox News in New Mexico as well as in their local paper. Gatlin lived his life as fully as possible until the very end.
Gatlin

Ellie lost her battle with Rhabdomyosarcoma two days ago after a long and very courageous battle. Ellie leaves behind a twin and two of the most faith filled parents I have ever met. Lance Armstrong tweeted about Ellie. You can read about her at http://www.liftupellie.com/

Matthew lost his battle to HLH. Matthew lost his little brother Andrew to HLH a year ago. His parents have buried both their children in the span of a year but despite their grief, they fight for new treatments and therapies for this rare disorder and carry on with undying devotion and faith to God.

I am always struck by the strength and faith of these families. They have experienced the worst that life has to offer yet they still hope. They still dream. They still carry on. They teach and inspire and though I wish with all my heart that I never had to journey on in cancer, I can't help but be thankful that I have been shown and taught about life and death from this community. Too often in life, we get caught up in the "shoulds". Children should be playing and happy and be spoiled. Every child should have two parents. Every family should have 2.5 kids, a suburban mortgage and a faithful golden retriever. No parent should bury a child. No parent should have to deal with cancer when they still have young kids. We all should live to 88 and die in our sleep. Shoulds do not exist. There is no specific way life is supposed to be. "Shoulds" are something that humans create. They rarely reflect was truly is or what is truly important. They don't point to anything important. This past Tuesday, I watched the finale of "Saving Grace". I was not a regular watcher but I was interested in seeing how the series, which focused on a police officer that walked the line between good and evil, ended. God sends her an angel who emphasizes that God has a task he wants her to perform, that only she can do. Grace took three seasons to tell God she would do what He asked. What that task is, is to face evil. She does and she wins but how she wins requires her to perform the ultimate sacrifice for her fellow man. The critics stated that the show forgot to save Grace. There SHOULD have been a happy ending that resulted in the defeat of evil without a sacrifice. But there was a happy ending and Grace was indeed saved. It was a more spiritual definition of saved, not the human definition. With God, there is no life or death. There is only life. Death is a change of state, like a solid ice cube evaporating into a gas. It's still water no matter what form. And though I've met many families who have lost children, parents, sisters and brothers, those gone from this planet are still alive...alive in memory, alive in their writings, musings, grief, joys, and successes. How we face death, speaks volumes about how we face life. We should do it without a preconceived notion about what should be and just deal with what is.. It is a shame that the greatest teachers for such a lesson are the children.