Kissed On The Grave, By A Rose Named Jessica

• Posted by Charles Lee, Jr December 23, 2009 - 1,046 views

  "I don't know why we're meeting..." I said to the room full of doctors and nurses. "She's dead, right? Legally and clinically dead and there no chance of her being revived?" A young nurse gently touches my arm, "Well, Mr. Lee, the annurism bled into her skull so fast, ti sufficated her brain before we even knew why she was seizing so, yes she is gone."

  So go-ahead and pull-the-plug already!" I said, as I look in the eyes of everyone in the room. "We just wanted to know if you wanted to see her before or after we disconnect her life support system."

  "After." I said, "And I want to hold her."

  My daughter, Jessica Rose Lee, was born March 5, 2000 and the age of 9 months, she was diagnosed with an "Extra-Gonadal Germ Cell Cancer", a rare cancer that normally begins in the reproductive organs of infants but hers began in her liver and spread to her lungs. It was an aggressive cancer that resited radiation and chemotherapy until an experimental bone marrow extraction from her and rthen e-insertion after chemotherapy cleared all traces of cancer.Everyone who had prayed for her shouted thanks to God in heaven. But she was not meant to live beyond July 3, 2001.

  It was on that day that she had an annurism, due to chemotherapy's tendancy to thin and weaken our blood vessels. Jessica began to have a seizure while at a follow-up oncology appointment and died, before they even knew what was wrong. I have never been touched by anything or anyone as deeply as my little girl. Her smile could make me cry tears of joy. Her laughter made me smile from the inside-out. And her quiet suffering was a courage I'd only heard could be done by Jesus.

  Though the tumor on her liver grew to the size of a grapefruit as it pertruded though her skin from her side, she never cried from pain, she never complained. I would spend nights at the childrens hospital during her cancer treaments and she would only sleep for short periods, raising her head to offer a smile or struggling to her feet to wave to staff and visitors who passed her hospital window.

  I have never seen such strength in any man, woman or child and if I were not visited by what I can onlt call, "ministering angels", I would've died the following night Jessica died. She was the most inportant thing in my life and I have wanted nothing else from this world, since her passing.  What she gave me was the courage to pick-up my cross and forsake the desires of this world, by following the understanding of Jesus.

   

  I balled like a man who had lost his kingdom, as I held her cold, clamy, leather-like skin against my face and I would almost swear I saw (or at least, felt) her soul looking into me from some omnipresent location. There will be no Christmas with Jessica for me but each year I dream of how beautiful she would be, as her birthdate comes and then goes by.

   

  She would be coming-up on 9 years old and because of her, the sound of children are like music to my ears; the sight of them is like seeing a miracle from God. If you have out-lived a child or even a younger loved one...

   

  I know the joy and pain of your heart and had it not been for God telling me He sacrificed Jessica, to draw me to His throne for answers, I would still feel her death was in vain and senseless.

  May God's Grace spare you of the road that costs you a child and grant His comforting mercy to those who grieve. As you hold your child toady and from now own, look them in the eyes, which are the widows of their soul, and say, "I love you always, and there's nothing you can ever do to change that."

  Yes, Jessi, Daddy misses you and there's nothing you, or anyone can ever do, to change my love for you.

   

  God's Abundant Peace and Blessings to All, during these HolyDays of Love...