Age 5 Boy Tells Mother 'I'm So Sorry for This' Before Passing Away
No love is quite as ferocious as the love of a parent for a child. We have a hard-wired impulse to want to guard these precious little lives that we’ve brought into existence.
Sadly, we learn very quickly that we can’t protect them from everything. The very world that we want to introduce them to is full of evils such as automobile accidents, natural disasters and illnesses.
And I can’t think of a worse illness than pediatric cancer. It’s a demon that one little English boy fought bravely for two years.
According to iNews, Charlie Procter from Accrington, Lancashire, England, was only three years old when he fell ill. He was diagnosed with hepatoblastoma, a very rare cancer.
It attacked his liver and then spread to his lungs in short order. People magazine reported that the cancer went into remission.
Sadly, the deadly illness came roaring back, and Charlie became known worldwide as his parents desperately fought to find a cure for him.
Celebrities such as Pink and Ellen DeGeneres joined in the effort, urging people to donate for his medical care. Some 18,000 people gave money in search of a cure.
But his health began a swift descent in October. His mother, Amber Schofield, chronicled her son’s struggle on the Facebook group Charlie’s Chapter, and it’s heartbreaking to read.
“As the days go by he deteriorates more and more. He no longer looks like Charlie,” she wrote.
“He’s so thin, (and) I can see and feel every bone in his tiny body, his sunken face, his rolling eyes. Where has my chunky baby gone?”
Perhaps the saddest post came right before Charlie’s imminent death. See, Schofield could tell that the illness was wearing on him.
“He’s sad, he’s tired, he’s fed up and depressed,” she said. “‘I don’t know what to do anymore’ are his main words.
“My heart broke! No child should feel the emotions Charlie is feeling.”
Mere hours before stepping from this world into the next, 5-year-old Charlie looked at his mother and uttered a tragic sentence: “Mummy, I’m so sorry for this.”
Late in the night on Nov. 9, the brave little boy drew his last breath. Both parents had enfolded him in their embrace as he drifted off to sleep.
“You have been not only our biggest inspiration, but you have been an inspiration to thousands of people all over the world,” Schofield wrote. “You showed me what love really means, Charlie.
“Now it’s time to fly, I am so, so proud of you. You fought this so hard.”
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