PRINT & PUT ON FRIDGE DOOR
That was last Easter Sunday.
It was a simple, yet touching display of fatherly gentleness and strength.
“It was the way he did it,” said Cambridge Mayor Doug Craig, who handed Kayla a snuggly blanket at Sick Kids Hospital that day.
“It was loving and tender.”
Three days later, Kayla got a new donor lung. Nine months later, she’s gone.
Her new donor lung, holding the promise of a long life after her own lungs had hardened into uselessness, slowly failed. Cancer, which she had beaten as a baby, returned. Her kidneys shut down. The breathing tank she worked so hard to shed, returned to her side.
Late on New Year’s Day, Kayla Baker died.
Her family and friends surrounded her. She was immersed in their love on her final Christmas, like french fries smothered in gravy and cheese in the poutine she so adored.
Now, a city is in mourning.
Many of the green ribbons put in place to show her support during her transplant and during the city’s Santa Claus Parade – she was absentee grand marshal – remain in place.
City flags lowered in tribute to Kayla on Thursday.
“She might not physically be here, but she will still continue to inspire,” her mom Susan said.
Susan said the family was doing as well as they could be expected to.
The city – with the old, emotional partitions of Galt, Hespeler and Preston crumbling in the powerful wake of Kayla’s cheerful charm – was unified in its grief.
The Compassionate Care team at her high school, St. Benedict, met in the afternoon. The entire student body, decked out in green, had gathered outside for a group photo showing their support in April. An entire school now mourns.
The tears of 11,000 Facebook page followers have poured post-after-post into her massive electronic memory book.
Kayla, who turned 15 in hospital, never returned home after the lung transplant.
She had been unlucky, her mom suggested last month, after cancerous lumps appeared in Kayla’s body. She had beaten a two-year wait for a new lung.
Why must she fight cancer again? Why does each hurdle lead to another? The staggering steeplechase of her life never got her down, her friend Sarah Taylor said.
“I rarely saw a negative in her,” said Taylor, whose own husband Keith is doing well after his own lung transplant a year ago.
Try to deny Kayla her daily poutine and she might shoot you an evil look, said Taylor, who visited Kayla a week ago after Christmas.
But otherwise, she was full of positive energy. She embraced her role as a poster child for organ donation. She began her own charity www.runalung.caand her name helped raise money for Sick Kids Hospital.
“She was given lemons and she was making a boatload of lemonade,” Taylor said.
And when doctors allowed, she ate a boatload of poutine, too. She opened bushel loads of cards from well-wishers around the world.
Celebrities came to see her. Television vampires, puck-chasing Maple Leafs and professional boxers were drawn to her little corner of the world.
“Because she was in the spotlight, so many people wanted to help her,” Taylor said.
“And yet, she would be posting pictures of lost dogs or reading stories about families that didn’t have something for Christmas.”
Then, she would turn to her mother and ask a question.
“What can we do? How can we help?” she asked.
Maybe one day, someone will receive a donor organ because Kayla’s efforts to raise awareness led someone new to sign a donor card. Maybe it’s already happened.
With more than 1,700 new donors registered between last April and September, Cambridge has a donor rate of 30 per cent. The provincial average, according to www.beadonor.ca, is 24 per cent.
“She and her story made a difference,” Taylor said.
From Easter Sunday until New Year’s Day, it was an emotionally overwhelming experience for a city deeply invested into a young girl’s fight for life.
Nine months ago, a wave of green-ribbon euphoria covered the city as a donor lung was found after a long two-year wait.
On Thursday, Cambridge had the wind knocked out of it. Kayla Baker was gone. Her supporters, like Carol Thorman, put on a face as brave as Kayla’s.
“Our loss is heaven’s gain,” Thorman said.
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