This Star Won't Go Out

Her writings now belong to you, the reader. We feel certain she would not have objected. She often spoke of her desire to encourage and inspire others and would have done that whether or not anyone noticed, perhaps especially if no one noticed. She was a champion of the lonely, a welcomer of strangers, an inviter.

Esther usually wrote in her journal as the final act of her day, in her bed, and only after first reading something delicious. It’s clear that she related to her diary as a person and often reread her entries as she sought to improve her strengths and address what she thought to be her flaws and failings. As the years moved forward, her style and content began to reflect a life of purpose through the perspective of an empathetic and joyful young girl forced to navigate the monstrous reality of a cancer death sentence, while at the same time entering the beguiling world of early twenty-first-century adolescence.




Children’s Hospital,

BOSTON, 2008




Flying home from Europe, 2004


In the face of such an unwelcome intrusion, we often found ourselves feeling helpless as we struggled to stay positive. For us, Esther’s omnipresent breathing machine was an incessant reminder that the day was coming when its comforting whirring would be silenced. But Esther chose to see things differently. Throughout her treatment, she felt that, overall, life had been good to her. She had the love of family, friends, and she was daily renewed in her focus on a mission to comfort and care for others. No matter how heavy the assault, until her work was done, she had no plans to abandon her hopeful post. Two weeks after her sixteenth birthday, she tweeted to friends:

Like if I can ask for three talents they’d be: able to reach into bodies (without hurting them) and remove all cancer, able to dance & WORDS



Creating words that could heal and energetically sharing and celebrating life in the here and now: that’s her legacy. We are convinced that this, along with a deep love for others, is how she would want to be remembered.

Her life was her book. She didn’t get to choose the ending, but the way she filled the pages makes her story irresistible. Sharing our Star—our amazing burst of sunshine—is a way of spreading light. We are so grateful that she graced our lives, if only for a short time. Through reading the words of this young author, we hope that others will be inspired and changed for the good, as we have been.





Untitled artwork,

DECEMBER 6, 2008





AUGUST 3, 1994


Born in Beverly, Massachusetts, to a minister father and educator mother, ESTHER GRACE EARL was well loved long before the world met her. Esther—which means “star”—was named for the courageous Jewish queen who had once-upon-a-time risked her life to save her people.





Esther at seven months,

HAVERHILL, MASSACHUSETTS, 1995





HAIR


Our Star was born with wonderful, flyaway hair that matched her energetic approach to life—it would not be tamed, so we didn’t even try! Occasionally we’d hear the comment about our toddler: “Bad hair day, huh?” Our indignant response was always in the form of a rebuking, “We love her hair!”





The Toddler,

WARD HILL, MASSACHUSETTS, 1997





CREATIVITY


Just two years old, Esther drew a picture of a boot with shoestrings and a smiling face. Her dad wrote about it in his journal:

“Esther, did you see that drawing somewhere?”

“Nope.”

“You just thought it up in your head?”

“Yep, I saws the boot, Daddy, and made a face fer it! You like it?”

“Yes, Esther, yes. I like it very much.”





Daddy’s boot,

1996





EMPATHETIC


When Esther was four we took a teaching contract in Saudi Arabia. Esther’s world revolved around family, including big sisters, Abby and Evangeline, and little brother, Graham.

Esther’s empathy, already clearly apparent, was demonstrated the day she generously applied sunscreen to Graham’s face. When he began crying because she got some in his eyes, Esther quickly intervened. “No, Graham, see, it doesn’t hurt!” and she put some lotion in her own eyes to show him. They both ended up screaming in pain as they ran off to find help!

Esther and Graham,

GERMANY, 2000





READING AND WRITING


In 2001 our family returned to Massachusetts, where Esther’s dad took a position with a church. By now an avid reader, she also found many opportunities to write stories and other things, including e-mails to friends and family such as this one to her dad from October of that year.

Dear Dad, I hope you’re doing ok. I made two more stories, “Scary Cat Ruins Vegetable City” and “The Easter Duck” and I’m doing well in school. I’m just kind of sad ’cause you’re gone. I love you and pray for you. And I thought about what I want from where you are and I want a stuffed animal or a Kinder Egg, I don’t care it’s just you can’t get me a beanie baby because you don’t know which ones I have so that’s why you can’t get me one.

Love and kisses from Esther XOXOXOXOXO

Esther Grace,

BAHRAIN, 2001





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