remembrance

Yesterday at work, we all received small black ribbon pins in memory of four of our employees (from a different sector) who were killed in the recent plane crash in New York. At 10:20 in the morning, we observed a moment of silence in their honor.

During this moment of silence, I was reminded of another time when I was given a ribbon to remember someone who had passed away.

When I was in 8th grade, I spent quite a bit of time in the hospital. Every few weeks, I would go in for a night or two to have an I.V. treatment (something like chemotherapy). One day while I was sitting in my hospital bed whiling away the hours until it was time to go home again, I glimpsed a boy walking into the room next door who looked familiar. Over the next few hours, I saw nurses, doctors, and family members going in and out of the room frequently. I particularly remember the boy's Dad. At one point, he came out into the hall holding a mask over his mouth. He lowered the mask and smiled at me.

It must have been the next morning when I saw the boy again. Only this time he was being wheeled out of the room in a wheelchair, looking like he'd been through a war. That was the last time I ever saw him.

The following Monday at school, the hallways were full of whispers. I could only understand that something bad had happened to someone. Finally, there was an announcement from the Principal. A boy named Jason had taken ill over the weekend. He had acute Leukemia. There were complications with his treatment and he passed away on Sunday.

I don't think I realized right away that this was the boy I had seen at the hospital. I didn't want to believe that I was the last of his classmates to see him alive.

What I learned later was that some bleeding in his mouth (possibly triggered by tightening of braces - the memory is a little bit foggy here) had tipped his doctors off that there was something not quite right. This led to the leukemia diagnosis. He needed a blood transfusion, which I believe is what was happening in the room next door to mine. For reasons unknown to me, he was then transferred to a hospital in the city. There is where they discovered that the transfusion had caused a clot in his brain. He had been scheduled to start chemotherapy the very next day, but sadly, he never made it that far.

A few days after the announcement, all of the students at the Junior High were given little cream-colored ribbons in memory of Jason. I pinned mine on my backpack, which is where it stayed all year, and all through High School, too. When I looked at it, I thought of that young boy I had seen at the hospital. But even more often than that, I thought of his Dad, and the brave smile he had given me from the hallway that day. His family was going through Hell, and he still found the strength to smile at the stranger in the next room.