SHE WANTED LIFE. FOR ALL!
My nationality is Croatian, I feel like a cosmopolitan man of the world, and according to my horoscope sign I am an irreparable optimist. Hello to all. My name is Tonči and I am one of Ana’s many friends, as well as her colleague from the editorial room. For a while, I was even her so-called boss at Vjesnik. Whenever the going gets tough, and God knows it happens, I recall a thought that I have “kept with me” since my younger days, from the beginning of the Homeland War. While all around Croatia shells and bodies were dropping, instead of going to a grammar school, or to the first, second or at least third front line, my destiny took me to a hospital. I ended up in the children’s oncology department, of all places. For a while, I really did not know where the situation was worse or more hopeless – in the hospital or outside of it. Just like in Josipa Lisac’s song, “instead of fog – death, death was all around us… ”
And then, I don’t know how or where, I “picked up” a thought.
When all is black around you, take a better look into that darkness and you will see a tiny white dot. If you keep on looking long and hard, it will grow, it will become bigger and bigger. At the end, everything will be white. The darkness will disappear.
OK, I’m not quite sure that that has ever been presented in such awkward terms, but according to the way I remember it, this was more or less “what the author wanted to say.” My darkness indeed disappeared without a trace.
Ever since our friend Ana Rukavina Erceg died on November 26, 2006, these words have popped into my head every few days. And they have kept on bugging me until this very day, the day we mark the sad, bitter, precipitating anniversary. On November 8, 2006, Ana wrote and sent that famous letter of hers. “I want life!” she cried. Today, there is probably not one person in our beautiful homeland, except for some grumpy old men or sleeping babies, who can say that they have never heard about Ana’s words. “I want life!” Oh, how she wanted it.
Yes, I know. Only 18 days later, that wish was forever denied to her. Only 18 days later Ana died. Yes, I know that her mother, Marija, her sister, Gordana, and her husband, Igor, will never again have anybody like Ana. The same goes for all of us who knew her, either as an acquaintance or deeply, it does not really matter. Ana has left us.
However, amongst the thousands of people who have been touched by her death, some share my horoscope sign – just like me, they are irreparable optimists. As a result of different life circumstances, all of us have managed to develop this strange skill, which I so strongly believe in, of being able to find that tiny white dot in the darkest of darks, and turn that dot into an “explosion of white”. That is exactly how I deal with Ana’s story.
Thanks to her, we have all experienced this “explosion” of white, humanity and nobility. Despite death, there was also life. Despite sorrow, there was also joy. Despite everything, there was Ana.
In the simple, sincere letter which started to aimlessly circulate by email around Croatia after November 8, 2006, Ana explained to all of us that nothing out of the ordinary was happening to her.
“Don’t be afraid, my story is not so tragic or depressing, it is simply life, a life from which you may be able to learn something,” wrote Ana.
This is exactly what happened. We learned a lot from that letter. The whole state read it, both the healthy and sick, and they found words of hope and comfort in it. Ana has become a role model for many people or she has at least helped them open a new page in their own lives – to seize the day, to make the most of their health and value it more…
Although the leukemia was a frightening threat, she did not think only of herself. She sought help for the other “little bald heads” as she called them. Many recognized that. Because, let us not deceive ourselves, Ana was not the first, and unfortunately, not the last person to develop leukemia and succumb to it. Ana is as important as any other patient, not a bit more, not a bit less. The only difference between her and our other sick friends, family members, acquaintances and neighbors is the fact that Ana dared to speak openly and said, “We cannot do it alone, we need help.”
That is how her letter became a message from the spokeswomen for all sick people. And they all responded: We want life! The subsequent, almost unbelievable sequence of events, only confirmed that. All her wishes have come true over the past year.
Ana wanted to improve the Croatian system for voluntary bone marrow donations and expand the Registry of donors. At the time she made her wish, the Registry had no more than 150 names, mostly family members of the sick. Today, on November 8, 2007, the Registry lists 28,204 voluntary donors from every corner of the state. Ana was also a great advocate of the establishment of a cord blood bank in which the mothers of newborn babies could store their umbilical cord blood. Everything that was discarded before can now be stored. Croatia has the Bank today. It was established on March 28th, on Ana’s 30th birthday, and the Bank proudly bears her name.
The only wish of Ana’s that did not come true was her wish to live. Ana died 18 days after sending the letter, on November 26th.
Somebody wrote ever so nicely on Ana’s blog that a person dies only when people stop remembering them. Owing to her letter, her foundation, all of her friends and all the noble people, Ana will never die. Just like all of our other sick Anas…
And as for me, I keep staring at that tiny white dot. Staring, staring, and staring. And the darkness is DISAPPEARING.