Watching someone close to you get to the point where they are on their death bed is not an easy task. The trick is to always have hope. My mom got sick right after she had my sister; she spent her days undergoing chemotherapy, and months out of the year in hospitals having bone marrow transplants. Her and my dad prepared me for her dying. They had hope that a miracle would happen and she would be able to come home. Being six, I had no idea how to hope for the best. I was upset with God for trying to take my mother away from me. She spent a year living in Seattle so she could be close to her doctor and hospital. I was in second grade, but school just wasn’t important to my family at that time. My dad, sister, and I spent most of our time flying out to see my mom. The first time we flew out there my dad had to prepare me for what my mom was going to look like. He came home one day and was completely bald he said “honey when we go see mommy, this is what she is going to look like” I didn’t realize what he was saying to me until I actually saw her. I didn’t recognize her she was wearing a scarf on her bald head and her checks were puffy from the chemo, but her hugs were still the same. She was still my mommy.

During the time we were out there I would see my parents holding each other crying, I didn’t understand until years later what they talked about on those several occasions. My mom had told my dad that she was probably going to die; the procedure that needed to be done had a 1 in 3 chance of working. My dad would say to her “Krisce we must have hope, for ourselves and for our children.” The woman before and after my mom were the unlucky ones from that statistic. I guess God thought that her two young children deserved to keep their mother. From this experience my family and I have always believed in the power of Hope. Hoping for the best in every situation, hoping that each new day will be better than the previous. Hope is the way that I choose to live my life.