September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Everything turns gold. Gold ribbons, gold shirts, gold graphics filling our timelines. Gold is supposed to be beautiful, but there is nothing beautiful about a child having cancer.
There is nothing beautiful about a little body carrying a disease that adults can barely survive. Nothing beautiful about hospital gowns replacing pajamas, IV poles following children through hallways or parents learning how to sleep sitting upright beside a hospital bed. There is nothing beautiful about a child learning words like chemotherapy, radiation, relapse and terminal before they are old enough to understand why this is happening to them.
There are children sick right now while the rest of the world keeps moving. Somewhere, a child is being told they need another needle, another scan, another surgery or another round of medicine that may make them feel worse before anyone knows if it is making them better. Somewhere, a parent is sitting across from a doctor trying to listen, but all they can hear is the sound of their own heart breaking. They are being handed test results, treatment plans and percentages when all they want is for someone to promise that their baby will be okay.
Childhood cancer does not only steal health. It steals childhood.
It steals school days, birthday parties, family vacations and afternoons spent outside. It turns playrooms into hospital rooms and bedtime routines into medication schedules. It forces children to miss their friends and siblings to grow up faster than they should. It leaves parents trying to hold together jobs, bills, other children and a home while their entire heart is lying in a hospital bed.
These children should be asking what is for dinner, not what their blood counts are. They should be picking out Halloween costumes, not choosing which arm gets the IV. They should be making Christmas lists, not bucket lists.
Then there are the children who should still be here.
Myranda. Jenna. Alex.
These are three of the names that mean something to me. Three children whose stories touched my life and stayed with me. But they are only three names in a sea of far too many. Behind every gold ribbon is another name, another face, another family and another child who deserved more time.
Their names should belong to children who kept growing. They should still be called from another room. They should be written on birthday cakes, school papers and Christmas presents. Their families should be yelling their names because they left their shoes in the middle of the floor, forgot to clean their rooms or stayed up too late.
Instead, their names are spoken differently now. More carefully. Sometimes through tears.
Their families have photographs where new memories should be. They have bedrooms holding pieces of lives that were supposed to keep unfolding. They have clothes that will never be outgrown and birthdays that still arrive even though the children they belong to do not.
People sometimes say children “lost their fight,” but they did not lose anything. Cancer failed them. The research was not enough. The treatment was not enough. The options were not enough. Time was not enough.
They did everything asked of them. They took the medicine. They endured the needles. They lay still for scans and walked into treatment rooms when every part of them wanted to go home. They were expected to handle pain, fear and uncertainty that would bring most adults to their knees.
They did not lose.
We lost them.
We lost the people they would have grown into. We lost graduations, first jobs, weddings and all the small, ordinary moments between them. Their families lost futures they had already imagined, and those empty places do not only exist on the day a child dies. They are there at every birthday, every holiday, every family picture and every milestone that should have come next.
There is no past tense for loving a child. Myranda is still loved. Jenna is still loved. Alex is still loved. Every child taken by cancer is still loved.
Death does not change that. It only changes where all that love has to go.
It becomes memorial posts and old videos watched over and over because hearing their voice hurts, but forgetting it would hurt more. It becomes visiting a place no parent should ever have to visit. It becomes seeing another child their age and wondering how tall they would be now, what they would be interested in and who they would have become. It becomes learning how to keep breathing while part of you is buried somewhere else.
While we remember the children we have lost, there are families living inside that fear right now. They celebrate good scans while knowing how quickly everything can change. They hold their breath through every fever and every phone call. They decorate hospital rooms with blankets, toys and pictures because they are trying to create something that feels like childhood inside a place built around sickness.
That is the part I cannot stop thinking about. Children do not stop growing, learning or becoming themselves just because cancer interrupts them. They still want to play. They still get annoyed with their parents. They still have favorite songs, favorite snacks, ridiculous jokes and things that make them laugh until their stomachs hurt. They are not diagnoses or sad stories. They are whole children living inside something horrific.
Childhood cancer needs more than one awareness month.
It needs more research created specifically for children, not treatments borrowed from adults and placed into smaller bodies. It needs more funding, more options and treatments that do not leave children carrying devastating effects for the rest of their lives. Survival should not mean accepting that a child may live with permanent damage because saving their life required destroying so much of their body.
These families need more support too. They need meals, gas cards, blood donations, help with bills and people who keep showing up after the first wave of attention disappears. They need employers who understand that a parent cannot always leave a hospital bedside. They need mental health support for parents and siblings. They need space to be angry, terrified and exhausted without someone telling them to “stay positive.”
The families who lose their children need more than condolences. They need us to remember birthdays and anniversaries. They need us to say their child’s name without being afraid we are reminding them, because they have never forgotten. They need us to understand that grief does not end when the funeral does.
This month, we will see gold ribbons everywhere. But please look past the ribbon. See the child whose hair is falling out. See the sibling who is scared and does not understand why everything changed. See the mother crying in the shower because it is the only place her child cannot hear her. See the father staring at a hospital bill while wondering how he is supposed to keep working when his child needs him. See the family leaving the hospital without the child they carried through its doors.
Say their names.
Myranda. Jenna. Alex.
They are three names that matter deeply to me, but there are thousands more being carried in the hearts of people who would give anything to hear them called from the next room again. Say those names too. Talk about who these children were, what made them laugh, what they loved and what they should still be doing today. Do not let them become ribbons, statistics or heartbreaking stories people scroll past.
And do not forget the children who are still here, still sick and still being asked to survive things they never should have faced.
Childhood cancer awareness is not supposed to be comfortable. It should break our hearts. It should make us angry. It should push us to do more than change a profile picture for thirty days, because these children deserve more than awareness. They deserve action, research, support, better treatments and long, messy, ordinary lives.
Myranda deserved more time. Jenna deserved more time. Alex deserved more time. Every child lying in a hospital bed tonight deserves the chance to grow up, make mistakes, fall in love and complain about bills someday.
September is gold because gold is precious. But there has never been anything more precious than the children we have lost, and there is nothing more important than showing up for the ones who are still here.
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