High School Stories: The Christmas Cards.

I could say that today’s story is about a kid who was diagnosed with leukemia, studied 9th year at high school and fought valiantly for three years against the evil that consumed him. Indeed, it is about him, but I mainly want to tell this story because it is about how two students flooded a High School with love and solidarity.

Being this young boy and his brother new students in school, he could not attend effectively the second year for health reasons. Two 10th year angels, whom I will call Laura and Maria, chose to work in their degree investigation about the children with cancer hospital, a special wing within the Razetti Hospital, in Barcelona, Venezuela. There they met this kid, whom I will call Charlie , and they knew that he studied at the same school. Little by little they were thrilled with their research and with their younger classmate, until they decided that it was not enough to investigate and learn about the work being done in the hospital, it was imperative to help Charlie somehow.

First, they organized a visit to the hospital with the other 10th year students. The willingness to help of all the students was incredible and they immediately joined the initiative. I remember that the day we visited the hospital, Charlie was in one of his chemotherapy sessions. The organizing work that covered that visit included the collection of personal hygiene items and food to be delivered to each child hospitalized in the area of cancer treatment. There were games, costumes, storytelling, the students shared and entertained the children of the hospital, and contributed with some of the supplies that their parents, the majority of low income, served as a great help.

Charlie required a complicated and expensive treatment to prepare his organism in order to receive a bone marrow transplant. Then Laura and Maria wanted to carry out some kind of campaign to collaborate with Charlie’s parents. Our Principal at that time came up with a fantastic idea: to organize a contest of Christmas drawings among the high school students, and with the winning drawings make some Christmas cards, the kind of cards that identify the gifts, and sell them in packs of ten. That's what we did. The participation of the students was massive. An exhibition of the drawings was made to choose the best ones. The winning drawings were converted into cards and sent to be printed. I took pictures of some cards to illustrate this post.

As we say in Venezuela, the cards were sold like hot cakes. It was necessary to send more cards than had been estimated, and the amount collected exceeded at that time, more than ten years ago, 7 million bolivars. The day we went to deliver the money to Charlie's house, Laura and Maria were very happy.

I'm sorry to say that our story today did not have a happy ending. The organism of our beloved Charlie, already very weakened, did not endure the pre-transplant treatment and died shortly afterwards. His death and funeral are one of the saddest moments I remember in our school.

However, his brief presence showed us the amount of love and generosity that a united community can generate. And the number of lives that can change. Many students were moved in the achievement of a goal that was reached and remained as experience for other activities that would be done later. Of the two students who had the initiative to help Charlie, one became a doctor. These are facts that touched the hearts of many and make me feel proud of what students can achieve when working with love in the same goal.