The Starburst Gift

When my brother was diagnosed with leukemia, I was only in the second grade. At that age, you don't have the words for things like oncology, prognosis, or chemotherapy. You just know that your world has shifted on its axis, and that every single day feels a little bit heavier than the one before it.

At my school, the teachers gave out paper tickets to students for being good. If you saved them up, you got to visit the school "candy bar" at the end of the day to trade them in.

While other kids were agonizing over chocolate or sour gummies, my choice was always automatic. I went straight for the Starburst.

However, I didn't eat them. Instead, I would sit at my desk, unwrap the paper wrappers with absolute precision, and carefully twist the wax papers together to join the two candies into one. It became a ritual. I would tuck that re-wrapped, makeshift package safely into my backpack, guarding it through the final bell and the chaotic afternoon bus ride.

Every day, the bus would brakes-screech to a halt at my stop. And every day, looking through the glass window, I would see them waiting for me: my mom, and my brother.

We would start the walk home, and without a word, I’d reach into my bag and pull out those two Starburst. Handing them over was my routine, a tiny, second-grade attempt to bring a piece of normal, sweet childhood back into a world that suddenly felt entirely too grown-up.

Cancer takes away so much control, especially when you're a sibling watching from the sidelines. You can’t fix the blood counts, and you can’t make the hospital trips disappear. But looking back, I realize that love shows up in the smallest, most ordinary spaces. For us, it was a pair of twisted Starburst wrappers on the walk home from the bus stop.