How far would you go to ensure your son’s memory lives on? One mother’s act of kindness is saving lives following her son’s untimely death.
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Love is a four-letter word that knows no boundaries or conformity. It is limitless, as are the answers as to what it truly is and the lengths to which we will go define it or show it. As a result, man might spend his entire lifetime trying to repay someone else0 for a selfless act.
For some, that means risking one’s own life–often throwing caution to the wind. For others, however, love can bloom in the darkest of hours, in the darkest corners of the human soul.
Nine-year-old Killian Owen was a normal by with a normal family. He has a twin brother and loved to play youth sports. The boys’ mother, Grainne Owen, describes Killian as a mischievous, fun-loving kid–as articulated in the video above.
The Owen family’s life was turned upside down, however, when Killian was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia at age five. By the time he was nine, Grainne and her husband–who is not named in the video–were burying their son. His death came as a painful shock, but as Grainne alludes to, there was perhaps nothing more painful than why he died.
Killian didn’t die because of a lack of available treatment. He didn’t die because his parents didn’t act quickly enough, nor because doctors didn’t do their job. The cause of his death was due to a lack of money–money the family needed fund his many rounds of chemo. Money which would have also gone towards future radiation treatments.
Grainne says, “When [Killian] was very sick, the doctors told us there was a drug that could save his life–but they also told us that there wasn’t enough money to [get it into circulation] for treatment. The thought that a matter of money was the reason we lost him was too much for me–and about a year later, I decided to raise money for pediatric cancer research.”
It was a decision that led to the launch of Coaches Curing Kids Cancer, an organization founded in 2005 that gives back to kids’ sports teams while raising awareness about childhood cancer. Led by the Owen family, CCKC has raised over $6 million towards its efforts.
There’s a clear lesson to be learned about the current–and future–state of man here. Money is a vital tool for man’s survival, particularly in today’s society, but what are we really doing with it? What is man really investing in? Most importantly, who’s really to blame for Killian’s death?
This goes to show that if we are to change as a society, we must start with the smallest of things–in the smallest of places.
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HooplaHa/Youtube