EDGAR

I was there when they brought in Edgar. I guessed his age to be three. He would not stop crying. His father, also Edgar, was praying at his bedside.

The next day I greeted the family. Both parents were there trying to calm the boy – Edgar was crying on his father´s lap, the mother tried to fan him with a piece of paper. I gave them a board book of Dumbo the flying elephant – suggesting it to serve as a better fan and perhaps a bit later also a story-book.

On the third day I came when Edgar, tired of crying, was fast asleep. His mother bent over to kiss the boy goodbye, then embraced and kissed her husband, left, then came back, embraced him again for a few moments, took his hand – I saw she did not want to go. Both showed so much concern. They had found out only a few days ago – it was leukemia.

I talked to the father. I said that to me all of them seemed like heroes.
“And you”, he replied,” a heavy duty you have chosen… to lift the spirits of these creatures.”

“I know nothing of suffering. I come here just for a brief moment to journey with my story-books, pencils and paper from one bedside to another to steal a smile, to make forget, to calm, to play to do whatever that moment requires of me to do… and then I go. I am free. I am passing through. I am like air. Yet you are everything to your children, you can not go when you feel like it. I admire your strength,” I replied.

He said that it was his child´s illnesses that had made him strong. He did not ask for it. But when it came, then strength came with it.

Here at the hospital children of the street seem rich, those in prison seem free. To be alive, to be able to walk to be able to breathe and eat and to exist without pain seems such a gift. Am I actually worthy of it?

And the parents, although well in their bodies, yet are they not broken hearted for the pain of their little ones? But instead of crying they have to smile and be cheerful instead. “We are not allowed to cry,” said Edgar senior, “So we smile."

Yet these are not joyful smiles.