Today there is sadness. Sadness in the fact that two young precious lives have been devastated by cancer and will not have as many years on this Earth as they should.
One life is that of Stella, the wife of Yarden Frankl (of Crossing the Yarden) passed away today after a long battle with stomach cancer. I wasn’t a reader of Yarden’s blog until late in their ordeal, but this update is heartbreaking to me nevertheless. No young man should have to say goodbye to his wife and their children should not have to continue to grow up without their mother. I can’t even imagine the pain that they feel right now. All I can do is pray for them and for Stella. Baruch Dayan HaEmet. May her memory be a blessing.
The other life I speak of today is the life of Sam Sommer, whose battle I have been following longer than Stella’s. Sam is Superman Sam – an adorable 8 year old boy who has been fighting refractory acute myeloid leukemia for the past 521 days. He won one round of battle with leukemia, then it came back and he had a bone marrow transplant in August, and it looked like it had worked. Then I saw his mother’s blog post yesterday. Not only did his cancer come back, but it came back in a form that there is no cure for, no treatment for. This is another situation where I cannot even imagine how his family are feeling. How to tell an 8 year old that there is no cure. How to tell his brothers and sister that there is no cure. What to say to your husband and your wife knowing that there is no cure for your child. I can’t imagine the sorrow and the helplessness and pain. There are just no words for it. I get tears in my eyes just thinking about it.
I can only pray, and pray, and pray…pray for Stella’s soul, pray for Yarden, pray for their children, pray for Sammy, pray for his parents, pray for his siblings, pray for everyone else who is fighting their battle with cancer, and pray for the scientists and researchers and doctors who work every day to find a cure, so that no one else has to a lose a mother, a father, a brother, a sister, a grandparent, a child, a cousin, an aunt, an uncle, a friend…anyone to cancer ever again.
A Journey of Discovery 