EVERETT — On Monday, with a strong wind blowing from the west, children and parents at Jackson Elementary School released about 150 balloons into the clear blue sky, each with a note attached.
The were remembering their classmate, Annabelle McDonald, who died May 12 after a battle with brain cancer. She was 9.
The balloon release was the idea of two PTA board members, Lysa Stremick and Aimee Bisterfeldt, who wanted to do something for Annabelle’s classmates.
“Just so we could send them up with our wishes,” Stremick said. The balloons were pink and gray to mark National Brain Cancer Awareness Month.
Stremick’s son Holden, 8, had written in his uneven handwriting: “I’m sad that Annabelle passed away. At least she’s not suffering anymore.”
“It’s pretty messy,” he explained.
Annabelle was diagnosed with retinoblastoma, a cancer of the eye, in 2010. She went through three rounds of chemotherapy before being found cancer-free in 2011, although she lost her eye in the process.
In 2013, however, a tumor was found in her brain and eventually spread to her spine, said Cindy McDonald, Annabelle’s mother.
Toward the end, she lost the ability to speak, and fungal pneumonia forced doctors to stop chemotherapy.
McDonald said she’d tried to shelter her daughter from the seriousness of her condition, but in the end told her.
“I think she knew,” McDonald said. “I let her know every day not to be afraid.”
McDonald said that Annabelle’s doctors thought her condition, called constitutional mismatch repair deficiency syndrome, was inherited from both her and Annabelle’s father, although tests haven’t been done yet.
What it meant, however, was that Annabelle was predisposed to childhood cancers, such as the tumor found in her brain.
When she was healthier, Annabelle was an outdoorsy girl, McDonald said, enjoying trips to the beach and to farms to see the animals.
While she was being kept at Seattle Children’s Hospital, the staff brought in a rabbit Annabelle loved to pet, McDonald said.
“She was very sweet and never bullied anybody,” she said.
Finances have been a challenge. McDonald works at a fast food restaurant and has three other children. Her partner had been taking care of McDonald’s other three kids at home and is only now returning to part-time summer work.
Friends have helped out with some expenses, and Annabelle’s medical expenses were covered by Medicaid, but she’s also set up an online fundraiser to help defray other costs: gofundme.com/57mnsc.
“The community’s been really helpful with food. We’ve got enough food stockpiled for the zombie apocalypse,” McDonald said.
On Monday, McDonald was joined by her youngest child, Abraham, 4, who ran with the kids on the soccer field at the school before the balloon release.
Bisterfeldt asked for a moment of silence, then read a poem from Madeleine L’Engle’s young adult novel, “A Swiftly Tilting Planet,” which Holden Stremick had rewritten to include Annabelle’s name.
Then the kids and adults released the balloons. The crowd cheered as a strong wind carried the balloons away and watched them disappear into the sky.
Chris Winters: 425-374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.
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