So here we are.... gliding along, not knowing others are really struggling...

That is a lie.  I know there are horrible battles going on every day, all day and every night. I know kids are dying and mom's are crying and people are getting horrible horrible bad, worse than you can imagine news.

As we head out of this current orbit around the Double Cord Blood Transplant  universe and head to the unknown galaxy of Post DCBT, I try to be a bit like Lot and not looking back at   Sodom and Gomorrah.  I don't want to know what is going on behind me but I know I am turning into a pillar of salt.  I have not found it possible to just walk away.  Or in my case, run like hell. 

It is so hard.  Sitting here tonight, working on my blog, trying to do some editing, figuring out what I need to do to publish and then I hear a ping.  A bell like sound that says I have a private message on Facebook.  I check and it says:  

I thought you would want to know my dear son passed away yesterday. 

I see those words and it is like a kick in the gut.  This is a kid that had 10 months of chemo and a major surgery and was clear and then, it was back just a few months ago and now it is over for him.  20 years old. I can just feel the balloon of hope and prayers collapsing around a devastated family and friends and his best friend that did a campaign for him to go to Europe.  (The hope was to take  both families but from what I can gather, it was just the two boys.   I am sure they had a great time. ) 

So I stop.  I reconnoiter, I check on my kid.  I gather the Momcologist around this devastated mom.  I relieve her of the responsibility of "telling" another human. I start to look for the obituary because I will go to the funeral/service.   I do a quick search and find the child's Facebook and Twitter account.  I heave a heavy sigh. I write a few words and do what I think helps and then I turn away and head back on our road to recovery.  

But I know it is like the Ray Bradbury story about the guy that steps off the designated trail when he goes back in time to hunt dinosaurs.  When he returns the world has changed.  I have stepped on another butterfly and the world will not be the same.  A bit of hope chips away.  

Every time one of these children die, they take a part of the universe with them.  How much they take depends on where they were in the child's life. The moms have a Grand Canyon, Winslow Crater, Pacific Ocean kind of hole in their lives.  The loss is never minor or insignificant.  It is gaping, hard to close and subject to multiple infections and complications. 

So we say goodbye to another child.  A family is decimated, the world looses amazing potential.   His last tweet:

If you do everything right, people won't know you did anything at all.