Death's door

In the half-light of dawn on an August morning, Alexa Brown drew her final raspy breath.

The 11-year-old girl slipped away while surrounded by her devoted sisters, Amanda and Abby, brother, Ethan, and mother, Wendy.

Her father, Warren, spent most of the night in the bedroom with his family, but retreated to the front porch in the wee hours of the morning for soul searching and rest.

It was in this intimate peace Alexa escaped the cancer that plagues many children in this small community.

Alexa's family and friends held vigil over the girl for more than a month, praying that God might heal her broken body here on Earth or guide her young soul to heaven.

The limbo she lived in -- struggling to breathe, struggling to eat, struggling to speak -- proved unbearable.

Back to square one

Doctors diagnosed Alexa with medulloblastoma, a type of cancer that attacks the brain and spine, in 2006. She was 8 years old.

While standing at the kitchen counter, Warren saw one of Alexa’s eyes drift involuntarily to the side.

It was terrifying.

“I knew right then it was something neurological,” he said.

Doctors found a tumor in Alexa’s brain, and she underwent an operation to remove it. Months of radiation and chemotherapy followed the surgery.

The tumor caused lasting damage.

Alexa — an A student, athlete and tenacious achiever — set about re-harnessing her memory and speech with determination.

She was the kind of kid who taught herself how to do backwards handstands.

Cancer put her back to square one. She relearned how to walk and tie her shoes. And she wanted to hop back on her bike.

“We’d help her on it and run with her and let her go and have her start pedaling ... just like you first learn to ride a bicycle,” her mom remembered. “I don’t know if she was scared she was going too fast, but she would wiggle the handle bars.”

Running beside her, Warren or Ethan steadied her to keep her from toppling over.

“It got frustrating for her,” Wendy said. “She learned to ride her bike when she was about 4 years old, so to be 8, 9, 10 years old and start all over again, that was frustrating.”

Re-diagnosis

After more than a year spent in and out of the hospital, Alexa and her family enjoyed a few months of relative normalcy in late 2007 and early 2008.

She went to school, found joy in family vacations and relief in a new mop of hair sprouting on her head.

An MRI in May 2008 showed new cancerous growths, and Alexa again underwent chemotherapy treatments.

The relapse devastated her family and infuriated Alexa. She wanted the “stupid cancer” gone. She wept when her hair, again, began falling out strand by silky strand.

Yet Alexa continued to endure spinal taps, nauseating medications and other injustices with nary a complaint.

“She’s been through things that would make a grown man cry,” Warren said.

Alexa just wanted to get better. But, by spring of this year, her doctors ran out of options.

The standard rounds of chemotherapy didn’t faze the cancer. Tumors along Alexa’s spine crippled her, causing agonizing pain in her legs.

Unwilling to give up, doctors recommended Alexa for a clinical trial in Vermont. They took Alexa off maintenance chemotherapy drugs to prepare her body for the new treatment.

The clinic required a new MRI to start the trial. What doctors saw on the screen was a bombshell.

During the three-week break from drugs, new tumors and lesions invaded Alexa’s brain. The discovery ruined any shot at participating in the study, dashing Alexa’s last hope for recovery.

Wendy and her daughters packed up the car and drove back to Ohio.

From then on, moments with Alexa were ever more precious. Her family wheeled her around the Columbus Zoo, took her to dinner at their favorite restaurant, and snuggled through hours of the Disney Channel.

Then, on July 3, she suffered a medical episode just before the family’s big picnic. Her heart raced. Pain radiated from her tumors.

She reached up and grabbed for her mom.

She pulled Wendy down close and whispered, “I’m sorry you have to go through this with me. I just want to be a normal kid with a normal life.”

Doctors at the hospital arrived at a grim prognosis. In the late stages of cancer, her body was shutting down.

Death watch

Doctors told the family that with her heart pounding in overdrive, it seemed unlikely she’d survive the night.

Alexa slid into a sort of coma. The family, grief stricken, decided it would be best to take her home where she could die in peace.

They tucked her into Warren and Wendy’s big bed and more than a dozen people camped out, surrounding Alexa with their love.

They waited. They prayed.

Against the odds, Alexa lived through that night — and then the next.

She sipped water and then some high-protein milkshake.

A week went by, and then two.

Wendy and Warren, absorbed in watching over their daughter, ceded care of the household to family friend Sheryl Conley and neighbors. They fed the legion of extended family and friends that became part-time residents of the Browns’ living room.

Dressed in pajamas, her eyes bleary from shedding too many tears, Amanda didn’t budge from her sister’s side.

They watched over and over again a slide show of butterflies set to music that Alexa’s uncle made for her.

A pregnant pause lingered between each of Alexa’s labored breaths. Everyone within earshot stopped and waited for her to draw in another.

The family kept vigil for several weeks until Alexa took another turn for the worse.

A trip to Fremont Memorial Hospital packed the family into a small hospital room for nearly a week.

When Alexa stabilized, doctors sent her home.

She lived longer than anyone might hope or expect.

A beleaguered community

Alexa died Aug. 6, a few days after returning home.

Her dad, sobbing, wrapped her in her Tinker Bell blanket and carried his baby girl to the waiting hearse.

“If you give me a pair of pliers and a roll of duct tape, I can fix pretty much anything,” Warren said that day. “But I couldn’t fix this.”

Wendy and Warren, squinting through puffy eyes, sat on their front porch and reflected. They said they took heart that Alexa no longer feels pain.

But her death ripped a hole in the fabric of their lives, resulting in a crushing emptiness.

“No parent should ever have to carry their deceased child from the bedroom to the back of a funeral car,” Warren said though tears. “No parent should ever have to do that.”

Losing even one child is devastating to a family and a community.

The Clyde area has said goodbye to three.

Kole Keller died of brain cancer in 2007, days after his sixth birthday.

Shilah Donnersbach also died in 2007 of Ewing’s sarcoma at age 20. She left behind a then 2-year-old son.

The Browns decided to make Alexa’s memorial service public so community members could bid farewell to yet another young life.

But the family didn’t want a service shrouded in mourning.

They made their peace with Alexa’s death in the months preceding it, and wanted her funeral to be a celebration.

No casket and no gravestone cast a shadow as loved ones and strangers alike honored the spirited girl who touched so many lives.

The family later sprinkled Alexa’s ashes on her favorite stretch of beach along the Atlantic Ocean.

Warren wore a yellow Hawaiian shirt to the Aug. 15 service at First United Methodist Church in Clyde. Wendy wore a purple dress.

Community members also adhered to the family’s request that everyone wear colorful clothing.

They sang Alexa’s favorite hymns and watched a slide show of pictures — Alexa as a pig-tailed toddler, Alexa at her beach, Alexa sticking her tongue out at the camera.

“She had a heart that could burst with love at any moment,” Amanda told the congregation as rivulets of tears trickled down her cheeks.

The ceremony ended on the sunny front lawn of the church when dozens of purple balloons weaved upward in the bright blue sky.

“Imagine releasing Alexa’s spirit to God, who gave her to us for awhile,” the Rev. Frank Brown told the crowd as they released the balloons.

Weeks before, as Alexa faded, Warren said she knew she would go to heaven.

Her faith remained steadfast while Warren’s wavered. He wondered how God could allow his child, any child, to suffer.

In the end he accepted Alexa’s death as part of God’s plan. Like the rest of the family, he found comfort in thoughts of Alexa riding her bike, hugging her grandparents and playing along the water’s edge in heaven.

“How could anybody face this without true hope of eternity?” he asked.