When Ashton received a special box from a cancer organization this past week, I read her the little girl’s story. It spoke of her no longer having to fight any more.

Cancer took her beautiful life away, but her parent’s keep her memory alive by bringing joy to kids like Ashton, and families like ours.

This beautiful little girl fought a brave battle against an incurable brain cancer for less than a year before she passed.

After I got done sharing her story with Ashton, she asked me “Am I going to die?”

Sloane quickly, and without understanding what the impact of her words would be, said “We don’t know yet.”

As my mind was racing with the ‘right’ thing to say, the only thing that I could muster was “Ashton you are going to beat this.”

I can’t imagine, being 7 again, having been through all that she has. I was too busy riding bikes, going on adventures with my siblings and friends, thinking about what nail polish color I should do my nails next, and getting excited for our family vacations.

But, Ashton’s mind goes there, wondering if she will die.

As much as I like to think Ashton’s naivety being only 7 is helping her through this, it shows she thinks about dying, and leaving her family, just like it did the night before her first brain surgery.

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From her hospital bed, two days after she was rushed to Cincinnati Children’s ICU from that first ER CT scan where they found her tumor, it was late, the room dark.

Her beautiful long hair still intact. Being the night before her surgery, medical personnel had drawn markings all over her head for the surgical incisions, added little monitor stickers to measure brain activity during her surgery, and then shaved the spot where the neurosurgeon would be cutting into her skull, and then her brain.

Her sweet little body connected to so many cords and monitors, making sure things didn’t progress in an instant with her cancer, preparing her for what would be life over the next year, at least.

Family and visitors had stayed as late as they were able.

She looked so healthy, so beautiful, so Ashton.

It was so astonishing, so indescribable, seeing my baby girl lying in a hospital bed looking perfectly healthy, but knowing she had a deadly brain cancer threatening her life.

I look back with torment, on my own lack of understanding, of just how different she’d be when she woke up next day.

But what will always stick out the most in my memory from that night is when she told me: “I am scared I am going to die.”

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Ever since I can remember, when I had time, or rather, I’d make time, and I’d write.

I have journals dating back from kindergarten, notebooks from middle school, and was always so diligent writing during high school, college, and throughout my 20’s and early 30’s.

Now, I don’t have time to keep up with it for myself, but I do it through my daughters, in their journals. Even from the day they were born, I kept a one day a week, 365 days a year journal, just to remember the real ins and outs. Because 5 under five, well, that gets busy 

Sometimes, rarely, I will read back through them,  because I know how emotional I will get.

These days, this is my writing. I can’t write in a journal. Because my mind goes too fast.

I have to type it, unbeknownst to my young self who would always write everything.

I could have never known, that my whole life, my whole time journaling, would be to help save me from my mental state with Ashton’s cancer.

This is kind of what life is.

You have signs and dreams and fears, and then one day something or another had prepared you for it.

The battle, the success, the change, the heartache.

We’ve all got it in us, we’ve all had those signs. Mine, that I never realized would be so crucial, is writing.

I need it.

I just never knew what for.