Hungry for Life

For Wilshire Baptist Church

“I want some actual food,” said young George after eating a pretzel bread stick with dipping sauce and then being offered fruit and vegetables. That was pretty typical and normal coming from a six-year-old boy with a big appetite and a little bit of attitude. But there’s been nothing typical about George, and seeing him acting normal is a blessing for all.

LeAnn and I met George in person for the first time on Saturday evening, but we’ve been following his story on CaringBridge since March 2024. George is my cousin’s grandson, and he’s just recently emerged from a grueling journey through treatment for pediatric leukemia.

Our interest in George’s journey has been high, not just because he’s related but because he started his treatments not long after I finished my treatments for cancer. As such, I thought I knew something about what he was going through, but as I read the periodic updates, I discovered I was wrong.

My treatment was rugged enough, but it pales in comparison to what George has endured. I had chemo and radiation treatments for three months, but George went through his ordeal for two years. It included chemo, spinal taps, transfusions and other procedures. Like me, he lost his hair and his appetite, but he had fevers, infections and other setbacks that put him in the hospital multiple times.

What really gives me chills is that while I was in my 60s and was old enough to have gone through other physical and emotional crises and gained some knowledge about cause and effect and endurance, George was an innocent child. He had done nothing to put himself in this situation and had no experience to fall back on. At his age, I was playing with my siblings and friends with no cares in the world except for who would rescue me in the middle of the night from the imaginary demons under the bed.

Still, George and I had some things in common that can’t be stressed enough: amazing doctors and medical staff who kept our focus on hope rather than fear as they treated our disease; family and friends who provided abundant care and strength for the journey; and countless people known and unknown who prayed for us.

For George, I was one of those unknowns who prayed for him, followed his story on CaringBridge and occasionally offered some words of encouragement based on my own experience. When we finally met in-person on Saturday, I was introduced to him as someone who in June had rung my end-of-treatment bell in solidarity with him at the exact time he rang his. When told that, George’s eyes twinkled and he smiled – an expression I’d seen in dozens of photos – but when I said I rang my bell so everyone between his house and mine could hear us, he said that was impossible because we were too far apart. The distance was 500 miles, so of course he was right.

For maybe a second I was disappointed my whimsy had fallen flat. What’s more, in my imagination before the meeting, I thought we might commiserate about our experiences and talk about being “surviving cousins.” That’s what we older folks tend to do when we’ve faced some of life’s biggest challenges. But not children, and certainly not George. I quickly realiized he didn’t want to talk about that. He had moved on. He was just a kid who went through something really bad but wasn’t lingering there the way someone older might.

George was hungry for more than “actual food.” He was hungry for a normal and typical life like any kid his age. As I sat down to visit with George’s parents and grandparents, he ran off to play with his siblings and some other kids he had just met.

Good for him. That’s exactly what the battle was all about.