Handkerchief Alert! Max and His Mommy, and The Runaway Bunny: A Story About a Little Boy and Cancer

 

Max’ Mommy 

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

 

 

We used to read The Runaway Bunny, by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd, to our toddler son all the time. A little bunny tells his mother of his plans to run away from home, and she tells him of how whatever he does, or wherever he goes, she will always find him, or he will end up finding her.
 

 

Unsigned
Humans of New York
April 5

…. Two weeks after Max was diagnosed, he asked me if I’d be his Mommy forever. I said, ‘Of course I will.’ And he asked: ‘Even when I’m ninety?’ And I told him ‘yes.’ What was I supposed to say? And there were all the times he talked to me about the future. We’d talk about college. I just couldn’t tell him. God I was such a coward. I should have told him. I just couldn’t do it. Even toward the end. The day before he lost consciousness, I read his favorite book to him. It’s called Runaway Bunny. And the little bunny keeps threatening to run away. And the Mama bunny keeps saying: ‘Wherever you go, I will find you.’ Oh God, it was such a horrible way to die. He couldn’t speak or move or swallow or see. He basically starved to death. And the whole last week I’m whispering in his ear: ‘Let go, let go. Please Max, let go.’ My seven-year-old son. I’m telling him to let go. I mean, fuck. That’s not supposed to happen! And the whole time I never told him he was dying. I was such a coward. But he knew. He knew without me telling him. Because a couple weeks before he lost his speech, he asked me: ‘Mommy, do they speak English where I’m going?’”….