Our girl was diagnosed with a brain stem glioma (a
brain tumour) that was expected to take her life…. Sadly, but
not without fight, it won. We lost our girl, February 9, 2003 to this
ugly monster inside her, one week short of her eighth birthday.
Bringing Tara home from her weekend stay at the hospital
and trying to put some normality into her life, and that of our family
while we tried to figure out how to survive, we were greeted immediately
with a phone message from Gail of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Southwestern
Ontario chapter as soon as we walked in the door. Now that in itself hit
it all home. When the MAW calls to grant your child a wish of all wishes
you know this must be serious and not just a bad dream you pray to wake
up from.
Thoughts instantly went to “how do we as parents
cram a whole life time for Tara, into the short time period we were granted
with diagnosis?” To think that with this call I could get for Tara
her wish of all wishes was more amazing than I can ever put to words.
Once I gathered the strength to return their call, I knew what the wish
would be, but wasn’t sure if we were reaching for stars.
Tara’s wish of all wishes was to have
her own horse! After a warm, compassionate
call and conversation, the MAW was going to get back to us regarding such
a dream. That maybe took all of a day, and voila, Tara was going to get
a horse!
A horse is a huge undertaking as far as wishes go and
family commitments, but we had the first problem solved, we already lived
in the country and had room to have a horse. Next steps were a corral
and a lean-too and feed and tack and stuff and things. The list seemed
to grow and worry set in that maybe we were reaching for stars and could
not bring this to a reality for our girl.
Ha, put that thought aside for you don’t know our
friends! Under the direction of two of the best, Heather and Paula…it
grew into an amazing reality. These friends worked with the MAW, the lumber
yards, a group of our amazing friends and started to put this wish into
motion. With Gail at the MAW finding us a trustworthy steed and our friends
at the helm of building the new homestead…plans came together like
you wouldn’t believe!
On that warm September long weekend (2002), in came the
crew! Twenty to thirty or so friends and neighbours, too many to mention
(and fear I would miss one if I listed them) lumber, tools, gates, water
troughs, barbeques, you name it, showed up in our yard early that Saturday
morning.
As it happens, I had Tara out ice skating with friends
that morning and we were trying too keep the wish a secret til the corral
was done. That’s alota building we had to keep quiet…and her
brother Josh didn’t even let it slip!
So upon return home from the rink I did my very best
to keep her at the front of the yard with comments of “Oh, Dad &
Josh were just building a fence, no biggy.” That seemed to work
for an hour or so as we busied ourselves in the gardens and such, but
one eye off of Tara and she was gone! Full speed, around the house wanting
to see what was going on… never wanting to be left out and well,
just plain nosey!
So with me in chase of my little monkey, my gawd, you
should have seen those big beautiful brown eyes pop out of her head when
she rounded the back corner of the house. A corral is a corral and there
was no hiding it now… for a little girl with only one wish, she
knew exactly what it was! |
