Chicken Soup for the Kid’s Soul (17 page)
Read Chicken Soup for the Kid’s Soul Online
Authors: Jack Canfield
O Christ, that it were possible
For one short hour to see
The souls we loved, that they may tell us
What and where they may be.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
From the time she was a small girl, eleven-year-old Rebecca loved to paint rainbows. She painted rainbows on Mother’s Day cards, rainbows on valentines, rainbows on drawings she carried home from school. “You’re my Rainbow Girl,” her mother would laugh, as she stuck another picture on the refrigerator with a big rainbow magnet.
Each bright band of color reminded Rebecca of something special in her life. Red, the color at the top, was like the sweet red ketchup she dumped on top of her favorite thing to eat, french fries—and anything else she could think of. Red was also the color of her other favorite food, lobster, which her mother rewarded her with at the end of every school year for a good report card. Orange made her think of pumpkins and the holiday she liked best, Halloween, when she could dress up and be whatever she chose. Yellow was the color of her hair—long, straight, fairy-tale princess hair that hung down her back like Rapunzel’s. Green meant the tickle of grass under the palms of her hands as she turned cartwheel after cartwheel, stretching her long legs toward heaven. Blue was the color of the morning sky, which she glimpsed from the skylight over her bed. Blue was also the color of her eyes, and the color of the ocean she lived near. And purple, the band at the heart of each rainbow, was her mother’s favorite color and always reminded Rebecca of home.
It was the last weekend in May, and Rebecca was looking forward to all her end-of-school-year activities. In a few days, she would be center stage, making all her friends laugh as “the nerd” in the school play. Shortly after that, she would be doing arabesques in her annual dance recital. Her father was about to host his famous Memorial Day weekend cookout. The only unhappy note was that Rebecca’s mother was going on vacation for a few days. It was the first time her mother had been away from home since Rebecca’s parents had divorced. Rebecca was unusually anxious about the separation and cried when they had to say goodbye. Perhaps she sensed something was about to happen.
Coming home late one night over the Memorial Day weekend, Rebecca, her father and his new wife were killed when a drunk driver traveling the wrong way down the highway hit their car. Only Rebecca’s nine-year-old brother, Oliver, survived the crash, protected by his sister’s body.
Rebecca’s funeral was held on the day that she was to have starred in the school play. It was a beautiful spring day, as bright and sunny as Rebecca herself. Rebecca’s mother closed her eyes and prayed. “Rebecca, I need to know that you are at peace. Please send me a sign. Send me a rainbow.”
After her funeral, Rebecca’s grieving friends and relatives were gathered with her mother at her grandparents’ house when, unexpectedly, it began to rain. It rained hard for a while. Then all at once it stopped. Suddenly, from the front porch of the house someone shouted, “Hey, everybody! Look! Look what’s out here!”
Everyone ran outside. Out over the ocean, a rainbow had appeared. It was a great big, magnificent array of colors that came down out of the clouds as if by magic. Every hue was bright and vivid and true.
As aunts wept and uncles jostled each other to get a better look, Rebecca’s mother gazed up at the beautiful picture her Rainbow Girl had painted in the sky and whispered, “Thank you.”
Tara M. Nickerson
T
hink of him still as the same, I say, He is not dead; he is just—away.
James Whitcomb Riley
The day that Grandpa came to school to pick me up, I knew something was wrong because Mom was supposed to be there. We were all supposed to go out to dinner that night to celebrate our friend Sherry’s birthday. When Grandpa told me that you had a heart attack, I thought he was just kidding. When I could see that he was serious, I thought I was going to die. I was too shocked even to cry. I felt so numb and helpless. I just sat there, thinking,
Why? You were so big, strong and healthy. You worked out every day.
I thought you would be the last person, ever, to have a heart attack.
Being in the hospital was terrifying. You were in a coma. You had so many tubes and machines all around you. You didn’t look at all like yourself. I could feel myself shaking. I just wanted you to wake up from this horrible nightmare and take me home.
The whole hospital was filled with many people who came to see you. They treated me very nicely. I never knew you had so many kind friends. Sherry was there, too, but we didn’t celebrate her birthday.
That first day was followed by a couple of days of restless sorrow, sleepless nights, and lots and lots of praying. None of it worked. On February 26, the most tragic thing of my entire ten years of life, and for probably the rest of my life, happened to me. The one person I looked up to more than anyone else in this world died. I don’t even know if you heard me tell you good-bye.
I had never been to a funeral before. I was astonished to see that over a thousand people came. All our family and friends were there, and a lot of people I didn’t even know. I figured out afterward that you must have treated them the same special way you treated me. That’s why they all loved you. Of course, I always knew you were so special, but you were my dad. On that day, I found out how special you were to so many other people.
Even though it has been over a year, I still think about you all the time and miss you very much. Some nights I cry myself to sleep, but I try not to get too downhearted. I know I still have a lot to be thankful for. You gave me more love in ten years than a lot of kids probably ever get in their whole lives. Sure, I know you can’t play ball with me anymore on the weekends, take me to Denny’s for breakfast, tell your corny jokes or sneak me doughnuts. But I also know that you are still with me. You’re in my heart and in my bones. I hear your voice inside my head, helping to guide me through life. When I don’t know what to do, I try to think about what you would tell me. You are still here, giving me advice and helping me figure things out. I know that whatever I do, I will always love you and remember you.
I’ve heard that whenever someone dies, God sends a rainbow to take the person to heaven. The day you died, a double rainbow appeared in the sky.
You were six foot four. I guess one rainbow wasn’t enough to carry you all the way to heaven.
I love you, Daddy.
Matt Sharpe, age 12
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me!” Words can never hurt me? During my life I’ve wondered—is that myth or reality? Now I know the answer.
When I was born, my dad and mom were very young. All they wanted to do was party, and they based their lives on alcohol and drugs. As I began to grow up, I spent most of my time with my grandmother because my parents weren’t able to help raise me.
Finally, when I was about five, my dad stopped doing drugs. He went to a place to get detoxed so he could be a real father to me. My mom tried to do the same thing, but she couldn’t stop drinking.
For years I lived happily with my dad. I saw my mom off and on. It made me sad when I stayed with her because she was always crying or making promises she couldn’t keep. It was rare to see my mom without a beer in her hand. Sometimes she had this blank look in her eyes. I knew that when she looked that way, she was trying to block out all her feelings. It was the way that she hid her pain.
One day I was in the front yard when my uncle Tommy drove up. I was excited to see him, and I went up to him to give him a hug. My uncle sort of pushed me away and told me he needed to talk to my dad. Later, he left without saying good-bye to me.
I tried not to think about what he and my dad might have discussed, but after that day I started having nightmares. I was dreaming really crazy stuff, trying to figure out what my uncle had said. Night after night it went on.
My dad would wake me up, telling me it was just a dream, but the dreams felt like reality to me.
Two weeks before Halloween, my uncle Tommy came over again. He looked so pale—he could have been a walking dead man. I gave him a wave and a faint hello. Then I walked away because I could tell he wanted to talk to my dad. After he left, my dad went into the house to talk to his girlfriend.
I was getting very worried. I went into the house and asked, “What’s wrong with the two of you?”
Then my dad told me something about my mom that I wasn’t ready for. She was in the hospital.
The very next day, I went to the hospital to visit her. I was expecting to see the same beautiful face of my mom that I was used to, but it wasn’t that way. I couldn’t believe the person lying there was really my mom. She had drunk so much beer that it had destroyed her liver. She looked like she had yellow cover-up all over her body. Then it hit me. My mom was dying.
For one week, my mom lay in the hospital, and I felt completely lost. I visited her so often that it was like I was living there.
Then one day, when I was at home, my dad received a phone call. His smile disappeared, he started to frown— and in my heart I knew what it was. There would be no more pain or suffering for my mom, and my nightmares had come true. The one in pain, the one I loved—my mom—was dead. Those three little words, “She is gone,” will hurt me forever. Sticks and stones would be easier to bear.
Damien Liermann, age 14
CALVIN AND HOBBES. Distributed by United Feature Syndicate. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
O
ne cannot get through life without pain . . . What we can do is choose how to use the pain life presents us.
Bernie S. Siegel, M.D.
There was a time in my childhood when I believed that God was punishing my family by making us watch my only brother die.
My brother Brad was a hemophiliac. If a person has hemophilia, his blood doesn’t clot in a normal way; so, if he gets a cut, it is very difficult to stop the bleeding. When too much blood is lost, he has to have his blood replenished to keep him going.
Even though Brad couldn’t be as active as other kids because of the hemophilia, we had many common interests and spent a lot of time together. Brad and I rode bikes with the neighborhood kids, and we spent most of our summers swimming in our pool. When we played football or baseball, Brad would throw the ball, and the rest of us would do all the rough playing. Brad picked out a puppy for me when I was seven, and I named her PeeWee. My brother, Brad, was my protector and my best friend.
When Brad was ten, he received blood from someone who didn’t realize, or was too selfish to admit, that he or she was carrying the AIDS virus.
I had just entered the sixth grade when my brother began to have serious symptoms, and was diagnosed with AIDS. He was a freshman in high school and had just turned fifteen. At that time, many people were not educated about how you “catch” AIDS and were very afraid of being around people who had it. My family worried about how people would act when they found out.
Our lives changed when Brad’s symptoms became obvious. I couldn’t have friends over to spend the night. Whenever I had a basketball game, only one, never both of my parents, could come to watch because someone had to stay with Brad. Often, my parents would need to be with Brad during the times he was hospitalized. Sometimes they were gone for a week at a time while I stayed at a neighbor’s or an aunt’s house. I never knew where I’d be from one day to the next.
Through all the sadness and confusion, I grew resentful about not being able to lead a normal life. My parents weren’t able to help me with my homework because they had to tend to Brad’s needs. I began having problems in school. The emotional part of slowly losing Brad, my best friend, made things even worse. I became very angry and needed to blame someone, so I turned my blame toward God.
It was a burden to keep his condition a secret, yet I knew how cruel kids could be. I didn’t want anyone to see my brother not looking at all like his former self, and lying in diapers. I wasn’t going to have him be the subject of their jokes at school. It wasn’t my brother’s fault that his twelve-year-old sister had to change his diapers or feed him through a tube.
The AIDS virus caused damage to Brad’s brain and destroyed the person that he had grown to be. Eventually, he became like a very young child again. Instead of listening to current music or talking about things that kids in junior high or high school would be interested in, he wanted us to read childhood books to him. He wanted me to help him color. I felt like I had lost my brother while he was still alive.
I remember the day that Brad died, just like it was yesterday. The old musty room was filled with recognizable faces. There was my brother’s worn-out body in the bed. The body was now empty, and the pain could no longer be felt. That was the end of my only brother’s life—two weeks before his eighteenth birthday.
Between 1980 and 1987, over 10,000 hemophiliacs like Brad received blood that was infected with the AIDS virus. Ninety percent of these severe hemophiliacs who were infected are either living with AIDS or have died from it. If the blood that they received had been tested before they gave it to them, their early deaths could have been avoided. As I see it, my brother was basically murdered.
The experimental drugs used to battle AIDS only made him worse. Even some of the doctors seemed to have a what’s-the-use attitude. Some of these things made losing him even more painful.
Since his passing, I’ve searched for some reason for his life and death. Although there may not be a complete answer to my question, I believe that there was a purpose. Brad taught us many things. He is still teaching people, even now, with the story of his life. I told his story to someone just the other day, and that person learned something.
Brad was a person who always fought for what he believed in. He taught his friends and family members not to give up. He never gave up, and he never gave in to his hemophilia. Although Brad was special because of it, he never wanted to be treated special. He would play basketball with the heart of Larry Bird, but the body of a hemophiliac. Those who watched him play for his elementary school team would see him limping up and down the court, trying his hardest.
Out of respect for his memory, we have not given up. My family and I have taken an active part in helping to make a difference in the way that people with hemophilia and AIDS are treated. We have been interviewed on the television program,
60 Minutes.
We have gone to Washington D.C. twice, fighting for the Ricky Ray Bill to be passed by Congress. This bill would help families who have been through similar or worse situations. The bill was named for a boy who was taken out of school because he had AIDS. People who were afraid of AIDS and thought they could get it from him burned down his family’s home. The people didn’t understand that people can get AIDS from tainted blood donations.
My brother gave so much love and happiness to so many people while he was alive, that his death left us feeling empty and sad. Before he was infected with AIDS, my big brother, Brad, was my protector and the person I would tell all my secrets to. Brad can no longer protect me, or even talk to me, and I miss him every day.
Since Brad’s death I’ve come to realize that God was not punishing my family for anything. He simply had given us a gift of love—my brother, Brad—that had to be taken back. With these lessons from God, I can continue with my journey—this journey called life—with the hope that everyone with whom I share Brad’s story will learn exactly how precious life is.
Jennifer Rhea Cross
[EDITORS’ NOTE:
If you would like information about hemophilia and/or AIDS, call the COMMITTEE OF TEN THOUSAND hotline at 800-488-2688.
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