When?

I'm having a hard time thinking of a post today.  It isn't that I don't feel like writing.  I just don't know what to write about.

In surfing around, trying to find inspiration, I read about a little girl who died today.  Well, I guess she died yesterday in a way, since it is still "yesterday" where she is.

How weird is that?  Where I am it is January 6th.  A day she will never see.  Yet it is still the day she died where her family is.

Anyway . . . another child lost to a brain tumor.  I've lost count of how many children I've read about who have died from brain tumors.  Sadly, I can count the number I know of who survived on one hand.  That doesn't mean those are the only ones who have survived; it just means I know of far more children who didn't survive than who did.

When is it going to stop?  When are children going to become important enough to the future of the human race that people will finally put some money into finding a cure.  Not just for cancer, but for every disease that takes our children away.  It's so easy for people to put money into fancy cars, big houses, jewelry, vacations . . . Starbucks, Coach bags, shoes.  Material things.  Donating money to find a cure doesn't become important until they are directly affected.

I know this because that is how it was for me.

I'm guilty of buying material things also.  I like shoes and purses.  But I love my children.  I am trying to spread awareness, raise money, honor the kids fighting as well as those lost.  I'm walking around with a bald head right now, all for $365 that I manage to raise in one day.  Not a big amount of money, but as the saying goes - every little bit helps, right?  But when I get weird looks from people, even when they know why I am bald, I just want to throw my hands up in the air and scream.  They just don't get it.

You know how they make suits that people can wear to see what it feels like to be pregnant, or fat, or old?  I want there to be some way to make every person feel what it felt like when I was told my child had a brain tumor.  To feel what I felt when they told us there was nothing more they could do for him.  To feel what it felt like to kiss his cold forehead one last time before I let a funeral home take his body out of my house.

Just for a minute.  I wouldn't want anyone to have to feel that pain for longer than a minute, because I know how much it hurts.  How hard it is to tolerate that kind of pain.

Trust me.  I know.

But maybe if they had to feel it for that one moment, just maybe, they would open their eyes and start fighting for the future of these kids.  The kids deserve that much.