Garilynn

In summer 2012, my aunt was diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma. Her name was Garilynn Hancock. When I heard the news, I frantically looked up lymphoma to try and get some sense of what it what doing to her body (if you are clueless, read more here). In the beginning, it was a really scary time for everyone. She was undergoing major chemotherapy, and it wasn't certain yet if she was actually fighting the cancer successfully. The months became a year, and by fall of 2013 we received amazing news. She had won; she could go home, get a job, and grow her hair back. What a joyous moment, I wish that it would have lasted much longer than it did. Less than a month later, she was diagnosed with lymphoblastic leukemia, a cancer related to lymphoma but an entirely new beast to tackle (mainly affects bone marrow). She immediately went back to chemotherapy and was staying at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fl.

The first week of April 2014, my parents, Mia Kessler, my sister, grandmama, and granddaddy all ventured to Jacksonville for a vacation/visiting Garilynn. The trip itself was actually a very fun time. We rented a house right on the beachfront downtown that was supposedly priced at $3,000,000 (thankfully not how much it cost to rent) and my grandmama cooked every single meal. I can confidently say I ate more chips and dip on this trip than any other trip I've ever been on, but I couldn't have been more happy with that fact. The ocean water was freezing; however, Mia and I still wanted to get wet, so we played in the waterhole. The waterhole was a low area on the beach that stayed filled with water when the tide went out. This small shallow body warmed quickly, allowing us to crawl around in it and pretend to be wild animals splashing in a waterhole in Africa.

Jax beach is dirty. There is more trash on the sand and floating in the water than I've ever seen before at a beach. Mia and I took it upon ourselves to fix this problem, spending hours walking on the beach and running into the frigid water to clean up as best we could. One night we went walking around the town and found a cappuccino maker on the side of the road. We naturally took it back to the house, along with a chunk of aloe vera (maybe actually not aloe vera because it was the worst smelling plant I've ever encountered) plant we found growing beside the cappuccino maker, and I could tell my dad was proud of me for bringing home a piece of junk I found. We never got it working; oh well. 

The trip was a blast, but we couldn't forget the reason we were there. Garilynn was so small in that hospital bed, the tall beautiful woman she was before was gone. It was her birthday; we celebrated by sneaking her in a pork chop. One week later, she died. It was so crazy to think about it. She beat one form of cancer, she was getting her life back to normal, and then she gets struck down again and this time doesn't have enough strength to get back up. I was sad; I wouldn't say that we had a super close relationship, but what really hurt was seeing how it affected my grandmama. To this day, she is still devastated that her only daughter and best friend in the world is gone.

We miss you, Garilynn.

Center: Garilynn / Left: her husband, Craig / Right: her son, Ben