APRIL 2004

IT WAS A KIND OF MAGIC

There were seven of us in the beginning. Seven kids in the same Battle of Life and Death. Five girls and two boys. All between the ages of seven and thirteen. The Chemo Kids.

One of the boys, Tumi, was one month older than me, and I always imagined him to be at least a foot taller than me. I had only ever seen him in his bed. The first time I saw him stand vertically (I'd already known him for five months) he looked like a completely different boy, so much younger and smaller than I thought he was. Not the man I always pictured him being, but a child like the rest of us.

Tumi and I never had a chance to speak to one another. Sleep, drugs, doctors and parents always got in the way. We never spoke but it didn't mean we didn?t know what each other was thinking from time to time.

The Chemo Kids watched each other go through the highest and lowest moments of the last days of our childhood. I think we all knew that the day we walked out of the hospital doors with the word 'cured' branded across our heads we would be the only people who would ever understand each other. No one else had a door way into our worlds, it was the just the seven of us.

When all our treatments ended we all headed home. Everyone had exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses so we could stay in touch. But Tumi seemed to disappear out of my life from the moment I left the hospital. It never meant I stopped thinking about him.

The Chemo Kids were like a sister/brotherhood to me. But it seems the age difference has now become more of a deep dark void between us. One thing comes between us now..... the truth.

Not all of us came back from that Battlefield.

No child deserves to die young. There is no justification for it. But no child who has fought the Battle of Life and Death before their twelfth birthday deserves to be lied to and have the truth kept from them.

In the late Summer of last year Tumi died. I was kept in the dark for six months. No one wanted to tell me because they knew I was ill again and they thought the news would be harder to handle. I finally found out in December this year. It was six months too late. The pain I felt inside me was like a piece of me being ripped away. That piece of 'me' being ripped away, my half of the ribbon that had been tied to Tumi?s ribbon. The pain didn't go away; I was feeling the pain I should have felt six months earlier when the ribbon had come undone. What kind of friend was I who didn't feel a ribbon break?

This message has taken too long for me to write. And I just hope now that there is some way that Tumi can read these words and know how much he meant to all of us.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

A MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

This is a message in a bottle,
That's missed the out going tide.
I'll try and throw it far enough,
So you can read the message inside.

There was never a moment in that year,
That you let any one of us see your tears.
Not a day went by when I didn't wish I could be next
to you.
Were smiles enough? It never felt like much,
To tell you how much we all admired you.
And as time went on, I watched a young boy
Become a man but always your Mama's baby son.

From the moment I knew how it had taken you too,
I went in search of a memory that I could no longer
find in me.
I wanted a memory that I could hold forever, so I can
hold onto you.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Vicki