In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade and he carries the reminders
of every glove that laid him low or cut him till he cried out, in his anger & his shame
“I am leaving, I am leaving….”
But the fighter still remains.
My baby – this fight has taken so much out of you.
I sit here tonight listening to you set off alarm after alarm in your utter and sheer exhaustion. I see it in your puffy little dark-circled eyes, and I sense it in the heavy way you lift your arms and I know…I just know.
You miss your sissies and you miss your own bed and you miss being at school with all your new friends and you just miss feeling “better”…I miss all of those things too. But mostly I miss them for you. If i could take all of this from you I would, in a heartbeat I would do it. But this is not how it works. YOU are the one with the story to tell my beautiful blue-eyed girl. YOU are the one who has grace and strength well beyond her years. YOU are the one who will be so mightily used by God…and YOU are the one who will teach us all about the important stuff of life, and how to live it fully.
It has been a long couple of weeks.
Our time in the “safe” walls of the picu is coming to an end. You are not quite out of the woods, but close enough to be home to finish getting better. You haven’t quite made “the flip” yet, but I have a feeling that this time it will be less dramatic than in times past. It will be a gradual returning of the strength you have lost, and the sparkle in your eyes. But it will return. I know it will. Because even after all these things have laid you low, the fighter in you still remains. And always will.
I have tried my best to fight for you this time…i hope I did a good enough job. I hope you are as proud of me as I am of you.
I hope you know that you are so very loved….not just by me, and daddy, and sissies. But by your grandmas and grandpas, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends…and perfect strangers around the world. All because you get up every day and you find something to smile about. You are amazing – do you know that?
I hope you know that you are so well equipped for this fight because of their prayers.
And because you are surrounded by an amazing team of nurses and doctors. You have made them all earn their keep this stay. you have taken their boxes and their textbooks and thrown them right out the windows in true Kendall fashion. But they have loved you and rejoiced with you and fought for you almost as fiercely as I do.
I know you are in so much pain baby, and I hope between me and your kickass nurses we can get you some relief soon. You fight so hard and it’s time for us to help give you a break from this fight for a little while. And then you can rest…and in a few days we will have you “better”. And then you can come home and fight there…
Sleep good my sweet baby girl. Rest well so you can fight more tomorrow~ Never stop fighting….
I’ll fight for you til my last dying breath~
I love you.
~mommy.
One of my favorite versions of this song:
some old posts i backdated and snuck in if you wanted to go back and read them:
A Kendall Quinn Update. (written the day before she crashed…)