RED BALLOONS....

I am a member of an online Scrapbooking community and recently, one of my fellow scrappers had a TRAGEDY happen in her life. Her son - DANNY - 5 years of age - died. He woke up throwing up and they took him to the urgent care. They found a 4cm tumor on his brain stem. They went into surgery to remove it but he never recovered. He was in a coma and pronounced brain dead. My heart bleeds for this woman and her family.

As a community of scrappers, we are rallying around her family and sending her love from all over the world. We have been asked to release a red balloon into the air on Monday to symbolize Danny's favourite movie - Cars - the RED Lightning McQueen.

I am not able to do this with good conscience knowing ful well that releasing that many balloons into the atmosphere would be harmful to the environment. Now, since the Skyline retreat is this coming weekend, we will be decorating the scrapbook room in red balloons and showing her that we support her, her family and Danny that way. We will also be collecting gift cards, sending her pictures of all of us holding a red balloon for Danny and sending her a cd with the song 99 RED BALLOONS on it. I know it is just a little thing to us, but I am sure that she will cherish it.

I think about Nathan being 4 years old - a year younger than Danny. It is a short little life that Danny lead, but after looking at Donnann's layouts of her family pictures and seeing his smiling face, I KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that Danny was HAPPY. I pray for this family continually throughout this hard time in their lives and I pray that they have peace.....soon.