Telling stories to remember

This week and next week, The Graphic-Advocate is bringing you stories about two area families dealing with childhood cancer diagnoses. These stories are neither easy to tell, nor easy to read.
September marks Pediatric Cancer Month, and while that was part of my motivation to reach out to these families, I had another reason, more personal, that really challenged me to preserve their stories.
In 2013, Angel Eaton was diagnosed with cancer. She was just shy of her 15th birthday. I knew Angel when we both lived in Hawaii – her mom, Kim, worked with me at West Hawaii Today, and I saw Angel grow from a precocious third-grade student to a young woman poised to enter high school. In the summer of 2012, Kim decided to move back to Alabama, where she grew up, and we continued to stay in touch through social media. My heart broke at Angel’s first diagnosis, cheered when she was declared cancer free in early 2015 and cried when her cancer came back suddenly in April.
Sunday afternoon, Angel, an 18-year-old with dreams of being a makeup artist on Broadway, died of cancer. I can’t cure cancer, but I can make sure people know her name and remember her. Her hometown of Tuscaloosa, Ala., is far from here, but I hope you will indulge me and spend a few moments reflecting on a young life extinguished too soon.
I watched as Angel grew up, navigating her way through the obstacles that so many preteens face in middle school. I saw her experiment with hair dyes, and learn how to incorporate a budding, eclectic, fashion sense in to her wardrobe.
For 15 months, Angel was cancer free, attending high school, going to concerts, playing with her nephew. And then, in April, the cancer came back, savagely. Doctors began talking with Angel, a senior just a month from graduation, who had college plans and was expectantly awaiting the birth of her first sibling, a sister due in August, about how to manage her quality of life.
To those of us watching from afar, too far to really do much to help Angel and Kim, the most we could do was pray.
And those prayers brought answers. The weekend before Angel’s Friday night graduation ceremony, she was bedridden in a hospital. Suddenly, her symptoms subsided and her doctors agreed to send her home. She attended her graduation ceremony, walked up to receive her diploma and threw her cap in to the air, just like everyone else.
She was able to attend on last concert by a favorite band, at a music festival she, her mom and uncle traveled to at the last minute.
She held on, getting sicker, while her sister grew and developed. The week Angel entered hospice, her sister, Autumn, was born.
Each of those things, those unexpected milestones, the chance to hold her little sister, were small miracles. They weren’t the miracle Kim wanted. Thousands of people – even ones I know don’t have much faith of their own – prayed for a miracle. But the miracles we saw happen weren’t the miracle that allowed a bright, spunky and precious 18-year-old to pursue her dream of being a makeup artist on Broadway. They weren’t the miracle that would let a six-week-old baby grow up with a big sister who loves her.
Those things were amazing, but they weren’t the miracle we really wanted.
Today, I remember the little girl who made a gingerbread house that we left on display in our newsroom long after Christmas had passed. I remember the girl who, in the Hawaiian convention of using familial terms as a way of showing respect, called me Auntie Erin. The girl who played with my older son after he was born. The young woman who traveled to New York City while still going through chemotherapy to see “Wicked” and meet the makeup artists who transformed actors for the performance.
I hope you will, too.