THE IMPORTANCE OF OUR MISSION

For more than 23 years we have worked tirelessly to find ways to comfort and support children with cancer and their families. How do you provide fun, laughter and excitement to a child battling cancer while at the same time helping their parents overcome the stress and anxiety of financial pressure related to the disease. When your child has cancer, your primary focus must be on your sick child and providing some normalcy for any siblings of the sick child. In a nutshell, that is what makes what we do critically important.

When Sarah was sick our family had tremendous support from family and the community and our experiences showed many families lacked any of that support. The Sarah Grace Foundation began with a desire to formulate a positive impact on those children and families that struggled, perhaps more than we did, to cope and get by.

We do not do this because of our grief we do it to overcome our grief, to find strength every morning to put our shoes on, place one foot in front of the other, and carry on. We work to find a path forward and put our loss of Sarah into some kind of perspective. We will never understand it and we will never accept it, but we must go on. We have to live life for Sarah, to live the years she was deprived of.                                                                                             We also have to live life for James who was 10 when Sarah died.

On that fateful day as Sarah was dying, I asked James if he wanted to say goodbye to her. He couldn’t. Years later, I realized how much courage that took and maybe he was right.  Not saying goodbye meant she was still here, and she is, just not in the way we would like.     It was not until my older brother died a few years later that I truly began to understand the loss from a sibling’s perspective.

Grieving is a lifelong process. After the loss of a child life never gets back to the way it was supposed to be. I returned to work 4 days after Sarah’s funeral. I was not the same person, and I will never be, but my boss and my coworkers were there to support me. One day during Sarah’s illness I was at work, not coping very well. My boss said I should go home and be with Sarah. His compassion and understanding meant a great

deal to me. I told him that sitting at my desk, difficult as it was, gave me a sense that life, somewhere, was still normal. Deep down, however, I knew that nothing would ever be normal again. The saying “normal is highly overrated “ is so very true.

Sarah would be 36 years old this year. Every time I see a young woman at a restaurant, in a store, or going about her day, I wonder about Sarah and what she would be like. When James started middle school, some days he would come home upset. One day he said “all my friends have siblings, and I don’t, Sarah isn’t there for me”. How do you respond to that? How do you comfort a young boy when you can’t understand your own grief?

The work we do, and the work of our Sarah’s Angels team—is critically important to the thousands of children and families the Foundation has helped over the years. The ability to bring comfort to a child battling cancer, to provide a momentary distraction from treatment, or to spark a smile during a difficult time is truly immeasurable.

Of equal importance is the support we provide to parents and caregivers. Helping to put food on the table, gas in the car, or keeping the lights on through utility assistance can ease a tremendous burden. These acts may be small, but they have a tremendous impact, allowing parents to focus their time, energy, and attention where it matters most: caring for their child. Sarah was always smiling and igniting that spark in these other children — that is how we honor Sarah and keep her memory alive.