What Happens After the Pediatric Oncologist Runs Out of Ideas

Each year I get a little more comfortable in this place of sorrow

My daughter Ana after a February snowstorm in 2015

We remember everything vividly — the appointments and phone calls, the bedside chats and furtive hallway conversations. We remember the look on the pediatric oncologists’ faces right before they told us what we never believed we’d hear.

We remember as if it happened yesterday.

“I’m sorry. There’s nothing more we can do.”

We remember the handoff to palliative care, the last wishes, the goodbyes.

We remember picking out gravestones and urns, writing eulogies, seeing their still faces for the last time.

No matter how many years pass and milestones our other children reach or how many gray hairs we’ve accumulated as we age and age and age — we remember.

We hold the burden of knowing that we couldn’t save our babies.

We try to cope. We form foundations to help fund research and support the newly diagnosed. We connect in support groups and read books about parental grief. We turn our profile pictures gold each September even though it never helps.

It never helps.