Dear Reader;
Grandma Moses was right when she said, ” Life is what you make it. Always has been. Always will be.”
I came across this story that I read, a long time ago, from lots of different stories on breast cancer-I had marked it to save. Today is a good day to share it.
Kitty Taylor’s mother was dying in a crowded charity ward in a large inner city hospital. Kitty’s father, an alcoholic, had left the family years earlier.
So Kitty, at fourteen, became the little mother to her three younger siblings. Now Dr. Gordon told Kitty that her mother had a very aggressive cancer.
” If your mother is lucky, she will last about three months… and if she is even luckier… she won’t last three months.”
Harsh as the words sounded… Kitty understood. The pain was so bad and it would get worse.
But Mrs. Taylor wanted to live and looked on each day as a blessing. As long as she was alive her children wouldn’t be put in foster care. So she prayed and clung to life.
Dr Gordon watched in wonder as the months stretched on and on. There was nothing more he could do for her yet her hope shone brightly in her eyes.
Strangely… since Dr. Gordon couldn’t help her-she began to help him through her faith and courage. One day she told him ” When death comes swiftly and suddenly-one can not prepare for it. But since I know I am dying and each day may be my last, I can make it a day of beauty and blessedness.”
Kitty was allowed to come to her mother’s bedside and each day she brushed her mother’s long hair and pinned a pink ribbon in it.
Mrs Taylor would send Kitty around to speak to the other patients and even give them a cookie from a kind cafeteria lady at her daughter’ school.
She always thanked the nurses who brought her medicine. She literally bloomed with life and light as she lay dying with a pink ribbon in her hair.
When no more strength was left one day she died. But her day to day struggle to show how precious life was did not count for nothing. Dr. Gordon adopted all four children so they could stay together.
” This woman taught me a great lesson, Dr. Gordon told the judge as he signed the adoption papers. She showed me how precious life is-worth fighting for and the pink ribbon was her badge of honor.”
So until tomorrow-Are we blooming where we are planted?
Kept Lachlan and Eloise yesterday and she is my girl with the pink ribbon in her hair.
” Today is my favorite day” Winnie the Pooh
Here are some “pretties” blooming around me-where they were planted.
