We just returned from the viewing for our friend’s daughter.  Tomorrow morning will be her funeral.  I watched her group of friends gather around and comfort each other.  Most of them graduated from our small Christian school between ’82 and ’85.  They had gone through elementary school, junior high and high school as best friends. They are closer than most cousins.  I envy them for their life-long friendships in this sadly transient world. 

Thank you all for your prayers.  Tomorrow at the funeral her seven best friends will sing with the teacher who coached them all those years ago.  I wonder if they realize what a testimony to faithfulness and friendship they are. I hope Kiana gets to listen from heaven. 

I didn’t know her well.  She had already graduated and was in college when we moved here.  I became friends with her mother though.  Her baby brother was the age of my son, and they became friends as soon as they met.  She married several years later.  I learned that she and her husband both contracted measles and had to cut their honeymoon short because they were so sick.  Each returned to their own parents to recover.  The marriage was strong.  Before long a baby girl arrived.  Then a son and another daughter.  I heard bits and pieces of her life.  I saw her children at church with their grandparents.  Sometimes I saw her and her husband. 

Friday morning she went to the doctor.  She has been experiencing a lot of tiredness and headaches.  She didn’t complain much, but then what mother of teenagers has the time to think about herself!  When she had visited her mom the week before, she didn’t want to go to the river with the kids.  Just a nap and I’ll feel better.  Her mom was concerned about the bruises under her arms.  She said she didn’t know where they came from. 

So on Friday, back at home, the headache was unbearable.  The doctor was alarmed at the bruises that were now on more of her body and ordered blood tests.  The tests revealed Stage 4 Leukemia.  He told her to pack up and get to the hospital immediately.  He’d meet her there.  She had barely gotten settled in the bed when her eyes began to get a far-away look.  The doctor asked how old she was.  “Nine years old,” she answered.

He turned to her husband, “Is she joking?”  

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh, no,” the doctor cried as her eyes closed, and she slumped into a coma.  She never woke up.  They air-lifted her to a major hospital and performed surgery in a desperate effort to relieve pressure on her brain from the bleeding. Family was coming from all over the country to be there for her husband and kids.  She lived on life-support for a little more than a day.  Long enough for her family to arrive.  Long enough for good-byes and tears.  This morning this 44 year old mother died quietly and peacefully. 

Please be praying for her family and her many friends.  She was a very loyal friend who had friendships that were almost as old as she was.