Mindy Sauer
and her husband, Andy, buried their five-year-old son this week. I cannot imagine the heartbreak felt by the
entire family when Ben Sauer’s three and a half month battle with brain cancer
ended on Tuesday night. As his twin brother,
Jack, and younger sister, Megan, played with worms in their backyard, Ben was
engaged in an entirely different experience.
One that the entire family met with the most incredible strength, even
in the face of so much pain…
I have
never met Ben or the rest of his family, but along with thousands of others,
both from our community and from around the world, I have followed the
challenging journey Ben and the rest of his family have travelled since Ben’s
unexpected diagnosis this past January. These
past few months have seen the Sauer family on a path that no one wants and no
one asks for, but Mindy’s blog has continuously portrayed her family’s
challenges with never ending faith and poignant honesty. In some moments, she questioned why her five
year old had to be in the .00002% of people diagnosed with this type of cancer
that was tagged with a 3% survival rate and in others, she made immense
sacrifices to maintain a sense of normalcy for her entire family as her little
boy underwent his transition from life into death.
As recently
as last Christmas, Ben was healthy and happy.
His parents did not yet know the definition of “Glioblastoma” and no one
could begin to imagine what would occur in the months to come. In the final three months of his five short
years, Ben Sauer made a profound impact on our greater Buffalo community and
the nation as a whole, as readers cried along with his mother, as she mourned
the boy she and Andy saw themselves slowly losing, while struggling to gauge
her other children’s emotions and simultaneously preparing for the birth of her
fourth child. Throughout these
impossible few months, Ben, Jack and Megan’s mom and dad sometimes resembled
superheroes, as they faced what no parent should ever have to. But they are not alone. So many people reached out to them during
their struggles, many who had had similar experiences and shared the same
emotions they were feeling, as well as thousands of others who had never
personally experienced anything like it, but stood strong for the Sauer family
anyway.
Now there is no blue Sauer twin to match
the green one (the boys were often dressed in different colors so that people
could tell them apart). The little boy
who was such an integral part of Mindy, Andy, Jack and Megan’s lives, is
finished with his own earthly one, no longer in pain, a beautiful memory caught
in his parents’ devastated tears. But Ben
Sauer’s short life is not defined by the tragedy that ended it too soon, but by
all the opportunities and lessons he was given by his loving parents and that
he took advantage of during the five years he spent on earth. Ben Sauer will forever be remembered by his
family as the boy who “worked in the
backyard instead of played”, the boy
who played the game with his brother where they “bumped their heads together”
and the tough little boy who never complained.
My heart, like the hearts of so
many aches that Mindy and Andy couldn’t save Ben. Even the best doctors at the best comprehensive
cancer research hospital in our area couldn’t.
Sometimes there are things that are stronger than us, out of our power. And as much as we would like to deny it,
tragedies happen.
It has been just over a year since eight-year-old
Martin Richard was killed before this nation’s very eyes in a terrorist attack
that brought our entire nation to tears.
His family’s immense strength in the wake of an event that injured his
sister and parents and left his older brother with PTSD, is incredible.
We’re also approaching the one-year
anniversary of the death of Zach Sobiech, a Minnesota teenager who lost his
battle with osteosarcoma last May, but not before touching people all over the
globe with his music.
In addition, Buffalo just said
goodbye to another young native.
24-year-old University of Richmond basketball staffer and Nardin Academy
alum, Natalie Lewis, was killed when a hot air balloon crashed in Virginia on
Friday night. Death may be a common fact
of life, but it’s one none of us are equipped to deal with when it hits our
loved ones, even when we might think we are.
So today, I, along with the rest of
the world, cry “sad tears and happy tears” for Ben and the rest of his family, and
for so many others who have lost a loved one recently. As Mindy told her other young son, sad tears
for the boy who will be dearly missed and happy tears for the boy who is under
God’s loving care now. The amount of
sorrow we all feel for all these families cannot be expressed in words, but may
they know that the community is rooting for them, and that we all watch in awe
at their never ending strength, in the face of so much.
For them all, we pray.
*To read more about the Ben and his family’s journey, find
Mindy’s blog here: bensauer.blogspot.com.
That’s all
for today,
Sarah
