When you take on a role that requires you to support people through difficult times you get involved with them in ways other jobs don’t allow. The privilege that comes with walking side by side in hard times and being part of that experience runs deep.
Sometimes in a helping role, you find yourself involved with a person or a family in a way that follows you home. Against all of your professional sensibilities you become emotionally entwined. It happens much more often that it ideally should. But we’re human, not just human but precariously empathetic.
Those we support at RCA trust us. They trust us to guide knowledgeably, and they trust us with their joyous highs, their darkest lows. There is no greater honour than being trusted in this way.
This month an anniversary looms for the RCA team. And it is an opportune time to reflect on the little life that, without wishing to overstate it, changed us all. The connection that was formed with the Isham family in 2018 is part of the tapestry of RCA as are so many stories we encounter in our work.
This is Ned:
Ned is described by his mother Emily on her blog Edward Isham.
You were the glue in our family – you were Eleanor’s sidekick at home, building Lego and wearing dress-ups together; you were Lucy’s co-conspirator and “big kid” partner in crime, getting to do the older activities or go on more ambitious adventures with Dada; you were Gilbert’s guide and cars playmate.
Ned died a year ago this month in the arms of his parents following a marathon 5 years with ALL, acutenew, recent, comes with an urgent or significant sense, is sudden, sharp lymphoblastic leukaemiacancer of blood and/or blood forming tissues. He was 6 years old. ALL diagnoses have a 90% 5 year survival rate but there are frustrating anomalies with otherwise “survivable cancers” that mean heartbreaking and horribly unfair cases like Ned’s still occur.
Ned’s family quite literally covered the globe to get him the treatments he needed, they completely uprooted their lives. Lives I would deign to guess remain fractured and forever changed.
I didn’t know how empty a dinner table could feel even with all of your 5 family members sitting around.
I didn’t know just how much strength would be needed to box up your clothes, to wipe your routine off the whiteboard, to wash up your drink bottle – so much so that we haven’t yet attempted any of these.
I didn’t know how distressing it would be to see other kids your age participating in school activities and running with joy abounding.
I didn’t know how hollow our family conversations would sound without your witty interjections and comical Dad jokes.
Our work to support the Isham family will stay with our team and the frustration and grief we feel will go on. A mother should never have to hold a dying child or carry his casket and our hearts break for their loss. We grieve with Ned’s family and with all of the families we have the privilege to walk with in their darkest times.
We remember you little Ned, fire engine loving rascal who has left a hole much bigger than a boy.