Hug Your Kids, Because This:

I will try not to make a habit out of what I’m doing with this submission, namely, sharing a video (in this case a pair of them) that promises to utterly decimate our readers’ hearts.  This story I share only because it carries the potential to embolden hearts by breaking them, to enrich our love for our children, and inflame our hate of cancer. The videos contain the story of a six-year-old Australian girl named Miette, who died of an aggressive brain cancer that attacks children between ages 4-9, at her home, in her own bed. In the first video, from a local media profile, Miette still lives, and appears anything but doomed. In the second video, a raw one shot by her parents on her last morning, we see Miette in death, lifted by her titanium-hearted father from the bed where she went to sleep, and carried out of the house.

The local media profile, in life: 

The parents’ home video, in death: 

I found the death video, and this story, on Reddit, in the MorbidReality sub. I posted there my immediate aftermath, which I recopy here:

“I’m father to a 3 year old daughter. The twinkle twinkle little star moment did me in completely. I sing it with my little girl, with the same hand gestures, all the time. That poor girl, father, mother, family. It’s far too much to bear. She, so young, how to contemplate what was coming? The father, to carry her body lifeless, when so often we know he’d carried her laughing. How does he hand her over? I think I’d have died myself at the handoff. The mother, first to witness the pooling of blood along her daughter’s back as she’s lifted. Horror heaped upon horror. Please, world, cure fucking cancer!”

Here, too, is the link to Miette’s mother’s blog: http://miettesjourney.blogspot.com/

And the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/miettesjourney