If you are an adult, you probably understand this fact implicitly, but if you are a kid, this realization might not occur to you for many, many years.
I grew up about 25 minutes away from Paul Newman's Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, where a dear family friend has been a dedicated full-time year-round employee for over two decades. As a kid, I spent time there in the off-season doing small but helpful tasks, like handing out bottles of water to adult volunteers who were building/improving cabins and by sorting items into goody-bags that would be sent home with families and sponsors at upcoming fundraising events.
It wasn't until I was practically in college that I realized the magnitude of the phrase "terminally ill".
How had this evaded me? Was it because I'd been the elder sibling of a terminally ill child, and therefore everyone assumed I already knew? Was the truth intentionally concealed from me because I'd already proven to be such an overly-sensitive soul?
Maybe--probably--I was just oblivious. My brain equated "terminally" with "very". The camp was for very sick kids.
How nice that very sick kids can have an opportunity to have the camp experience while still receiving the medical care they need.
And that was where my processing ended.
The fact that repeat-campers would be significantly fewer than at the 4-H camp I attended with the other healthy kids never crossed my mind.
I didn't consider all the funerals Auntie Karen had attended, or the colossal strength of soul and spirit it would take to exist in the tragic reality of such an otherwise-positive career.
***
With the unexpected death of my former student, Nicole Wilson, our community has rallied around a special summer camp exclusively for children with diabetes. It's my understanding that Nicole had attended Camp Sweeney for several weeks of each summer for the previous nine years.
Nine years.
Nine years of attendance is possible because diabetes, while obviously very serious, is not supposed to be terminal.
Not here. Not now. And definitely not to someone we loved so very much.
When Nicole's family asked that donations be made to Camp Sweeney, social media and mainstream mass-media helped introduce our community to a place many of us never knew existed.
I bet Nicole took that camp by storm, I thought, for never before had I met such an outgoing, confident, insightful, compassionate, spunky, goofy kid. I bet she brought a light and humor and radiance to them that warmed everyone she encountered and every space she filled.
Listening to members of her camp family speak at last night's candlelight vigil in the park, I noticed that they spoke with many of the same qualities I'd always adored in Nicole. I began to wonder if the camp had played a significant role in cultivating those positive attributes.
Perhaps this was where she lit her torch each year, returning renewed and ready to shine her special light on us.
I suspect it was.
***
Summer camp has traditionally offered opportunities for life-long friendships.
In the case of camps for terminally ill children, life-long is often too short, and most campers' fates are heart-breakingly predictable.
Camps for kids with chronic diseases, especially those like Camp Sweeney which are targeted toward specific illnesses, offer an opportunity to change campers' fates.
Education, establishing positive habits, and building up a support network of similarly-challenged peers--in addition to all the other cool activities and experiences that make summer camp fun and memorable-- can feasibly change the course of those campers' lives forever and for the better.
While it seems like all summer camps are costly, those which care for special populations of kids are especially expensive to run because of the additional and essential component of medical expertise and equipment.
When we make donations to these camps, we are not just helping to off-set financial costs. We are acknowledging their importance in our culture.
I'm grateful that both kinds of camps are a part of our society, and I hope you'll take a moment to learn more about them and perhaps even make a contribution so that more children can benefit from a camp experience.
You can learn more about The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp here: http://www.holeinthewallgang.org/
You can learn more about Camp Sweeney here: http://www.campsweeney.org/
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