Comments from survivors on grief and loss
"My family is broken now. My parents separated last year. My parents never told me, but I know it was because of my illness. We lost our house to a foreclosure and a bankruptcy. My mom’s car was repossessed and my father is on disability because of his inability to work due to his depression. I lost the sight in my left eye and eventually my eye because of the tumor. But my mother would always tell me 'you are not a sick child but a child with a sickness.' She taught me not to use my illness as a crutch but to overcome what I had been handed. My parents also tell me 'it doesn’t take two eyes to see all the beauty in the world’ and I am thankful that I have at least one eye to see all of it." Tayler, 18
"'But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams, his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream, his wings are clipped and his feet are tied, so he opens his throat to sing.' Maya Angelou’s description of a caged bird standing on a grave of dreams relates closely to my life. For me, the image of a bird’s wings being clipped symbolizes my brain tumor and the major impact it has had on my life. The dreams of which she writes represent the dreams I felt were lost to the wind after the first MRI revealed a mass the size of an orange in the right occipital-parietal lobe of my brain." Katherine, 17
