Every child deserves the right to live, play, learn and grow—especially at six years old. But after just that short bit of life here on earth, Elena Desserich and her family were given the news that she had a rare form of inoperable brain cancer.
Doctors gave the almost 6-year-old girl just four months to live.
Elena’s father, Keith, said that the family would not let her diagnosis hinder the small amount of time she had to live.
“We wanted to protect her so we never told her she might not make it,” he explains. “We didn’t want to focus on the cancer, we wanted to focus on being a family and doing all the things that Elena wanted to do.”
With a brave heart, and her innocently beautiful spirit, Elena battled diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas (DIPG) for nine months before the disease took her little life.
But while Elena’s family was busy giving her the best life they could in the days leading up to her death, she was busy with a different project that her family knew nothing about.
At just six years old, Elena had the heart and understanding to leave her family something they’d desperately need later on.
She spent several months writing notes to her mom, dad and little sister, Grace, then hiding them all over her family’s home. Some had messages and some were drawings, but all of them were a piece of Elena.
There were hundreds of them—enough notes to fill three large boxes!
Elena’s mother, Brooke, explains that each handwritten letter from her small little daughter was an incredible source of comfort after she passed.
“I think the notes were her way of telling us that everything would be OK. It feels like a hug from her every time we find one.”
The notes were tucked away in every place you can imagine—dresser drawers, in between dishes, behind pillows and in other random places around the family’s house.
Two years after Elena’s death, the Desserich family decided to compile all of the notes they’d found and create a book called Notes Left Behind.
The book tells the story of Brooke and Keith as they struggled to balance their emotions in fighting Elena’s cancer at all costs, while also accepting the reality of what is to come for their little angel.
It’s a journal of their lives through the journey of losing their 6-year-old daughter, while serving as a true testament to the joy and love that Elena brought to the world throughout her short little life.
Watch as Elena’s parents tell the heartrending story of the hidden treasures their daughter left behind. Her Notes Left Behind will forever be written on their hearts. ❤️
