Another child whom we have known on the cancer journey died this month. Her name is Christina. That’s who she is, even now, regardless of whether she’s among us in body, or moved along to another place that we cannot yet follow.

We have been back to Children’s Hospital Boston the past few months, where we spent so much living time, to host small celebrations and events for the new community of families and patients who must stay there. We remember what it’s like to need some distraction…to look forward to almost anything out of the ordinary…even if it’s a handful of volunteers with crafts and face paints and a new movie and some yummy cookies. Amazingly, it feels good…healing…to return to this place we have known from the inside out. 

Also, we provide 4 bins of supplies for the surgeons, nurses and volunteers who go on the Rotaplast mission to Colombia. We’re sending, to children who are undergoing reconstructive surgeries, the same sorts of supplies that so effectively relaxed, distracted and comforted Jessie when she required urgent medical interventions. The number one item on the list? Bubbles! Also: books, crafts, puzzles, puppets, games, small toys, and lots of other distractions. 

And we launch a pilot program on the North Shore, called im*PACT. It’s a peer group for teens living with loss and trauma, due to bereavement or the trauma of living inside a family with a life-threatening or catastrophic diagnoses. It’s the sort of program we sought for Sarah, back when Jessie was live, and after she died. It didn’t seem to exist. And so, we have developed one for local communities.

Best of all, we’re organizing a bike ride called the COAST of HOPE (Sat, June 20th, Father’s Day Weekend). We’re offering 37.5 and 75-mile routes through historic Ipswich and its surrounding coastal communities on Boston’s North Shore. For the past several years, friends and family have ridden in the PMC to raise funds for cancer. We’ll do it again this year (father-daughter ride on the teen route to Wellesley and back). But we’re also bringing that passion for cycling home. Jessie used to go down to the parking lot of our neighbors, the Morris family, and ride her bike with training wheels. She zoomed in laps and held races with us. She and Sarah rode their bikes along the sidewalks of town, along parade routes. She wanted to learn to ride a 2-wheeler. She wanted to grow up and ride her bike to school, like her big sister Sarah. 

Jessie’s ride has gone around the bend, to a place in the road we cannot see. But we continue to ride right here, on this earth, along this geography, mile after mile.

This year, Sarah, her dad and lots of friends (please join us) will ride through the woods, wetlands and waterways of Ipswich and neighboring communities. The COAST of HOPE ride will raise funds for Bright Happy Power (so we can support projects like the ones we described above). Visit www.brighthappypower.org to learn more about the ride, and to sign up as a volunteer or to register as a rider. 

Because cancer didn’t just happen to Jessie. It happened to all of us. And a lot of the choices we make now are shaped by how we continue to live with that experience as part of our lives. Finding purpose. Making a difference. These are ways that we can keep going, even in the face of great loss.

Two years ago, Jessie carefully wrote out her name in cursive on 44 Valentines for her classmates. She was five months off treatment, and looking forward to life as a survivor. She had finally returned full time to life as a student at Winthrop. She was earning another belt in karate, getting sassy at home, picking fights with her sister Sarah, thinking about her many possible career options as a grownup (inventor, teacher, karate instructor, dancer, vet) and exploring her special talent as a dog psychic. She had a crush on a boy. She liked to hide in under the counter in the dark in her black jazz pants and black tunic curled up with the black lab Lacey. 

Sometimes it burns bright, those shining, visceral, laughing memories. Sometimes it aches. All the moments she imagined and dreamed about and talked about with us that cannot ever happen. But her presence, even in our minds, is a quick poke in the arm even now…a prod to remind us that life isn’t about what we’re going to do tomorrow. Or what happened yesterday…or two years ago. 

Life is inescapably now. Here. This is what we’re given…for sure. Tonight. This morning. This. Whatever this is. It’s ours. To do with as we will...