The Little Ones

Work’s been intense and draining recently, so I haven’t found much energy to log on. Or basically do anything much at all.
But even as I write this, I think about little C and her long-suffering mother Cynthia, and I reprimand myself inwardly for being so weak and whingey.

Work is nothing, work is not draining.
I should count myself blessed to have a steady job to go to every day, one that I enjoy and that feeds and clothes me.
Work is sheer chicken shit compared to the kind of despair a parent feels when a child is diagnosed with a terminal illness; the kind of bottomless despair that’s more than tough enough for a couple to go through with each other for support, let alone for a single mother.

I feel Cynthia’s pain in her emails, where she never fails to express how thankful she is for the help that we, and countless other people, have given her.
I hear it in her tear-filled voice when she calls to check on or change her tickets, because that usually means starting a new round of treatment for C, or taking a leap of faith to chance a change of environment like when they decided to return home to SIN.
I can almost see the waves of pain leap off her blog entries, when she describes waking up each and every day in the past two years to a depressing routine of running around various hospital wards and departments, watching blood being taken from and poison being poured into her daughter’s tiny frame. And yet, she has to stay strong and press on, never knowing when they will see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

I don’t know who has it worse.
C, whose young body has been pummelled and punished mercilessly in these two years, who should be running around playgrounds carefree as a bird like other kids her age?
Or Cynthia, who has willingly put her life on hold infinitely all in the hopes of a miraculous recovery for C and who has to bear all of her little girl’s agonies on top of her own?
And does it even matter?

Cynthia’s despair cuts right to my heart even though I’ve never even met her in person before.
When I write to her, I never quite know how to end off; do the likes of “Cheers, and all the best” or “Please take care, we wish you all the best” sound lame or do they sound lame?
Every time I get off the phone with her, tears form in my eyes and I need a moment or two to compose myself.

But they don’t need sympathy, or tears. They need us to do our best for them, so that little C has one more fighting chance against those damned tumours.

And so that’s what I try to do.

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
This Easter, as we celebrate His resurrection, I hope and pray that God will somehow shower joy and a blessing, in some form or other, on all sick children and their families. Let there be hope and laughter in their lives still, that they will have love in abundance, because love truly can help to conquer all. Amen.