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Five Year Old Cancer Patient Leaves Hundreds of Notes for Her Family
Filed under: In The News, Amazing Kids
When five-year-old Elena Desserich was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer, she set out to help her family deal with her death in a truly remarkable way. The kindergartener started writing -- she created "The Kindergarten Survival Guide" for younger sister Grace -- and drawing.When Elena's cancer robbed her of the ability to speak, she used drawing and painting to communicate with her family. One of her paintings, titled "I Love You," was hung in the Cincinnati Art Museum, next to a painting by Pablo Picasso, one of Elena's favorite artists.
But she also wrote hundreds of notes for her family and hid them in various places around their home in Wyoming; her parents didn't know about the notes until after Elena died. "We were moving some boxes around one day and in between some of the books a note fell out," recalls mom Brooke Desserich. "Each time I would read one of those notes, it was like a little hug from her."
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It's no surprise that Elena turned to writing to stay connected to her family. In the nine months between Elena's diagnosis and her death in August of 2007, her parents were also using writing to cope. The couple kept an online journal, chronicling their daughter's illness and their own struggles to come to terms with the inevitable. To their surprise, thousands of people read the journal and reached out to the Desserichs. "Everybody was reading the journal and going, 'This taught me to be a better parent. It taught me to spend time with my children, it taught me to value being a mom and dad,'" marveled Elena's dad, Keith Desserich.
Keith and Brooke Desserich have turned their journal and Elena's notes into a book, "Notes Left Behind." They have also started a foundation called The Cure Starts Now to raise money for pediatric brain cancer. My heart goes out to them -- I also have a kindergartener who likes to draw and leave little notes around for me to find -- but I have to admire the way they were able to teach Elena to see her life as joyful, and not as a tragedy. They really are inspiring parents.
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ReaderComments (Page 4 of 4)
2-24-2009 @ 3:14PM
Lindy said...What a beautiful little soul. My heart goes out to her family.
Reply
2-24-2009 @ 5:14PM
Marlene said...My mother was a loner and agraphobic....and she did that too.....she left notes all over the house. She left them in the light fixtures, the inside of lamp shades, behind the clothes in her closets, on windows behind drapes, inside the piano lid, etc. She left instructions on what to do with her things and a sweet comment to whoever found the note.
I found the one in the light fixture....I said "This light fixture stays with house when you sell it. And don't forget all the times you changed the light bulb and helped me around the house...I appreciate that and love you for doing that." Signed Mom.
We kept all her notes in her photo album and call them, "Love Notes."
What a very special treat for the family. Elena was a very special 5 year old.
Reply
2-24-2009 @ 9:31PM
Kimberly McDevitt said...This child was absolutely proof that you should never underestimate your children and their intelligence and their ability to show you, even through and after death, that there was, and still is, a purpose they existed.
God bless her and her family for sharing with all of us who read this. I have had to stop crying before I wrote this and am proud to say that having 3 children (one of which I almost lost to pneumonia at the age of 5 months) can appreciate the love they had and the courage that little angel showed to her family through her art and letters.
Thank you for sharing that piece of your life with us all.... God Speed...
Reply
2-28-2009 @ 8:30PM
Myra said...I too lost my daughter of an inoperable brain tumor (brain stem glioma) I'm not suprised at how remarkble your daughter was, so too was mine. "God bless you and your family"
Reply
2-17-2010 @ 1:48AM
Mary Mongiovi said...Hey Marla, did I SAY my opinion was the truth? I merely stated that truth hurts, which is why people will devise all kinds of explanation except that one.
Reply