Waking Up With A Broken Heart

“Help Us Find A Cure”……. November 9, 2012

“To truly understand the depth of the plea “Help Us Find A Cure” your life must be touched by someone who has a disease for which there is no cure. Only then will you feel the anguish and desperation behind each syllable. Please Help Us Find A Cure for Childhood Cancer so no other parent of a child with this devastating disease will feel this pain.”

Silvia Vanni, Sal’s mommy forever

Please Help Us Find A Cure……

Every day people tell me they understand and they know how I feel. That my baby is in a better place and that I should be happy he is no longer in pain,  That “there is a reason for everything”, etc, etc………….

Unless you have watched your child suffer the unimaginable, heard him screaming in pain, seen him being humiliated time and time again, listened to his cries for help,  or found yourself begging God for mercy………………YOU HAVE NO IDEA…….

I write this blog because it is an outlet for me. Because it lets me express the sheer torture I have to live thru each and every day.  Because some people want to know what it’s like for some reason………. Because it helps me to cope……….. Because I love you all and want you to know that although I am dieing inside, I am still alive………………

To some Sal “passed away” 21 months ago. To me it was 2 seconds ago………….I long to hold him, to kiss him, to touch him, to rub his soft beautiful head………….. The pain is as much physical as it is emotional.

How do I describe the depth of my pain?? It is pure inexplicable torture.  To have to live the rest of my life without my baby is just unimaginable to me.  I wake up and he’s not there, I go to bed and he’s not there…… How could that possibly be??? How could God have taken away my most precious possession? How???????  Why?????

I believe in signs, I always have.  I get many signs from my baby. You have to truly believe to see them and accept them.  I long for them, I LIVE for them now.

The Holidays are here. Do you realize how difficult this time is for someone who has lost a child? Halloween…..Sal’s favorite time of the year……………….it came and went…..without him.  (how could that happen????)  I know he would have been Captain America this year. Did I walk thru the Halloween section of any store?……..NO.  Did I go to Party City like I have every year for the last 20 something years of my life????………….NO

Did I buy candy for the kids that came to my door……Yes, …but none of Sal’s favorites.  Did I personally answer the door and see all the smiling happy faces????……NO………   Did I buy my kids face paint and whatever else they needed to enjoy this night?………….Yes, but nothing Sal would have wanted to use.

Thanksgiving is next…………………….

Sal & I spent Thanksgiving 2007 at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in NYC.  He had just undergone a 12 hour surgery to remove the massive tumor in his body after 5 grueling, painful & torturous cycles of chemotherapy. His incision had barely healed by Thanksgiving……spanning from the middle of his back across to the front of his body and down to his groin.  Can you imagine??? He was only 4 years old and his body had been split in half to remove a lethal foreign body that would eventually take his life.

Thanksgiving 2008  we highly celebrated with 40 family members his very short lived NED status (No Evidence of Disease). 2009 he was neutropenic,  (extremely low & fragile immune system) but thankfully home for a few days, we celebrated with only our immediate family, just my husband, myself, my sister,  and our 4 other kids.  I made every single thing he wanted.  He ate and drank to his hearts content…..then we shopped online for EVERYTHING he wanted…………. 2010, Home, happy & off/on pain………………..none of us knew this would be his final Thanksgiving. How could we have known? How could we have understood that? How could we have possibly accepted that?  

2011……………..no turkey, no celebrations, no thanking God for all the gifts he has given us……just anguish & tears, tears,  and more tears……….  2012???????

Not many can relate. Very few can understand. The death of a child by cancer is a life sentence to the parents of anguish and agony. 

A sentence which I wish upon no one……………..

Our very last Thanksgiving together……….

I miss you Papo……..