The memory of the curls that framed her cherub face
still come to me in dreams.
A call to aid a soul with fever brought me
to a Madonna and her child,
My heart knows her as Angelique though not her real name.
A pair engulfed in love, sat looking out with fear,
Imploring for a miracle to come.
Her pallor spoke of hidden danger rapping at the door.
That knocking called me there to give what aid I could.
The work of karma, or the hand of God,
would intertwine out lives with prayers of hope.
By chance what skill I had
included time well spent
with treatments being tried by doctors from St. Jude's in Tennessee,
developing new ways to aid those children
thought to be beyond the pale
of modern scientific tools.
Her fever was a symptom of death's coming,
for cancer flowed throughout her ravaged core
as tests that night would prove.
We trio traveled the painful road of treatment then devised:
the cherub, her madonna, and physician hand in hand,
A miracle evolved as cancer ebbed,
remission came.
The family moved to bayside city to explore
the chance for better times and care
from experts there in case the curse returned.
It did,
although a year had intervened with childhood joys restored.
Madonna and the little angel came home
for local family aid that year
and asked that I reprise what succor I possessed
until the end.
But when the final dread did come to pass,
I knew this angel realized her fate,
and went in peace
to where love is unending
for those both here and there
between a mother and her child.
A half century has transpired
since this memory came to be,
the tools of science have now devised
the means to re-enact the miracle of remission
and of cure
so relapse no longer rears its ugly head for most.
Her memory still lives within my soul
and visits me in dreams from time to time
both filled with sadness and with joy
For that cherub's visit reminds me still
that God exists
and shares a bit of heaven here on earth
each time a child is sent to show us love and peace
upon this troubled mortal orb.
~ Raymond Leo Blain MD
