Kami
Update: I wrote this post Wednesday night. I learned today that Kami passed away this morning (April 22). For more please check the family’s news page on their Web site.
People are dying, and I’m always trying to write something funny. It even occurs to me that I might try to write something funny about people dying.
I don’t know if that’s right or wrong.
But this, I know, is wrong:
At the school where my girlfriend works, a little girl is dying.
Her name is Kami. I have never met her.
Yesterday morning she was getting worse. Her doctors talked about hours and days.
Hours and days.
She is 7.
The cancer that started in her back two years ago has spread throughout her body. She has gone through many rounds of radiation and chemo, and now there’s nothing left to radiate.
Her classmates, first and second-graders, planned a bake sale to raise money for a play kitchen to donate to the childrens’ hospital. Everything for 25 cents.
My girlfriend helped paint a bakery store-front mural on the classroom window. She drew the outlines; the kids filled in the colors. Kami was there when they did it, last week. She didn’t help paint, but she watched and listened.
Yesterday was the third day of the bake sales. Nearly everyone in the school passed through the classroom to buy cookies, cakes, and pastries.
Kami was not there.
She was in the hospital. She’s been in and out of the hospital a lot over the last two years.
On the family’s Web site – www.nguyenchildren.com – the photo albums show what has happened in that time. From the first moments when the family found out about her illness, through her repeated bouts with chemo and radiation, Kami’s progress has been documented.
First walking. Then a walker. Then a wheelchair.
And the lost hair.
It’s all there, and I can only hope the family takes some solace in sharing their pain.
Or maybe, that they find happiness in sharing their joy. Because each day they have with Kami is a blessing. And each photo – be it of her riding horseback or her smiling in a hospital bed – is a moment they had with her.
A moment they could easily have never had, and may never have again.
And though it’s wrong that this little girl is being taken away, it’s so right that she was put here in the first place.
I wonder how much she understands of what’s happening to her. I wonder what she thinks about the future.
About her future.
Does she know about hours and days? Does she think in hours and days?
Is it possible, really possible, for a person, no matter how young or old, to learn to think about the future that way?
I don’t know. But I hope not.
I’ve never met Kami, but if I did, I would tell her to keep her future long and distant in her mind.
Years. Decades.
And then the walker. And then the wheelchair.
All in good time.
But not now. Not at seven.