My 100 Days with SenseiA couple of nights before the Soka Spirit Conference I found out one of my best friends, Ansley, had just found out she had another tumor. This one was right next to a major artery, so she could die at any moment. The night before we left for Oregon we had a planning meeting for the study presentation we were going to put on. Right in the middle of the meeting someone called me. I didn’t answer the phone because we were in the middle of a meeting, but I did glance at the display long enough to see it was one of our other friends. I became petrified because the news of her tumor was so fresh in my mind. I thought she had died. After the meeting was over I anxiously checked my voicemail and was relieved to find out that she was just inviting me to a water polo game.
During the first day of the conference I was still in a bit of a panic, which soon dissipated due to all the daimoku and activities.
About a week later, in October, one of our other friends went to visit her in the hospital. One thing you should know about Ansley is that she is very optimistic. If you tell her something distressing she’ll always be able to find a bright side. When Katie went to visit her, she said something to the point of thinking she wasn’t going to live through this one. This scared everyone. A lot. I found all this out at her homecoming that Ansley couldn’t go to.
A week later her birthday came around and the night before I determined that she would be cancer free by New Year’s Eve. The week after that she was feeling much better and was at home, and, therefore, was planning to go to my school’s homecoming with some of our friends and me. As it turns out she couldn’t go to this one either because she was still restricted to a wheelchair outside of her house.
It’s been a month since then and she’s still mostly trapped in her house, but now she can walk around and she goes to school sometimes. She seems to be getting better. I’ve started doing Gongyo every night and chanting for her health. A couple weeks ago I went to visit her and invited her to come to a youth meeting. She said she’d really like to. She actually did come to our Chapter Youth Division Halloween Party the weekend before Halloween. That night we had seven guests and twenty-one youth come to the meeting.
There haven’t been any major break throughs with her health yet, but I’m sure that soon something great is going to happen.
Tasha Hobbs, Kent/Covington Young Women's District Leader
No comments:
Post a Comment