A birthday not celebrated

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

Today is her birthday. She would have been 10. At school they would have sung to her. At home there would have been presents and cake and a party. But she died in June so there is no celebration.

In the house not far from Wollaston Beach where Leanne lived with her mother and grandparents, though there are photos of her smiling on the walls and shelves, there are few real smiles anymore. Her absence fills the place. There are no feet pounding up the stairs. No books flung on a chair. No "Mama! Nana! I'm home!" Two women who loved and raised a child are empty without her. They try to put into words their loss, their love and their pain. But words can't hold these things and so as they speak, tears fall.

On the day Leanne was buried, the grandmother says, a stranger walking past Sacred Heart Church in North Quincy, seeing all the parked cars and the flashing State Police cruiser, said to a woman who was standing on the church steps: "Wow. Someone important must have died." The woman turned to him and answered, "Someone important did die - a 9-year-old girl."

Leanne had just finished second grade at Sacred Heart School when the headaches began. Her doctor suspected a flu or a lactose intolerance. But then she began vomiting. In one week she lost five pounds. Leanne's mother took her to Children's Hospital where they diagnosed a brain tumor. She was operated on the next day and was home four days later. The tumor was benign. Doctors told Leanne's mother, Janice, that they got 90 percent of it. The family celebrated. But then there was a complication. Two weeks after the surgery, fluid built up in Leanne's brain. She needed another operation. Back to Children's.

Six times Leanne was operated on for fluid build-up. But everything was still okay - as long as they could fix what was wrong, as long as Leanne would get well. But then she started vomiting again and more tests revealed that this little girl, who was just 4 feet 2 inches and 65 pounds, didn't have just a brain tumor. She also had cancer of the spine. She had radiation and chemotherapy. Her beautiful, long dark hair fell out. She grew weak. One of her lungs collapsed. She couldn't eat, so doctors inserted a feeding tube. She had nosebleeds. She lost the use of her hands. She was in so much pain she needed morphine, but the morphine made her hallucinate. "When she couldn't walk anymore, that was the hardest thing," her mother says.

Still the cancer kept growing. Nothing could kill it. There was a Make-A-Wish trip to Disney World and fund-raisers given by friends, and visits and prayers and incredible support. For her ninth birthday, the family hired a limousine to take Leanne wherever she wanted to go. But where she wanted to go, no one could take her - school, piano lessons, skating lessons, afternoons with friends, trips to Building 19 with her Nana. All these things were gone. Her childhood was gone. The cancer had stolen it. Now it was after her life.

When Leanne received her First Holy Communion in a white dress her grandmother had made, just weeks before the headaches began, she asked her mother, "Can't I go to Heaven and come right back?" Less than a year later her mother sat on the hospital bed in the small den turned sick-room in her parent's home, and told her only child, "When you get too sick you go to God early."

Janice slept every night on the floor next to her daughter. Now she sleeps alone in a room filled with her daughter's photographs and crayon drawings. There's a dream catcher above her bed. She says it keeps the bad dreams away. But there are no more bad dreams for Janice. She's lived the worst dream. She shows dozens of pictures of her daughter. She calls them "the pretty good pictures and the awful sick pictures. They hurt, but I'm glad I have them." The two women look at the pictures and cry. How can they not? Today is Leanne's birthday. She would have been 10.