Paper Cranes and Wishes

“This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace on Earth.” sign at the foot of the statue of Sadaka Sasaki in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial

The last time I saw him he was in hospital. Sitting in a chair beside his bed. A big chair to encompass his big body. But his body wasn’t as big as it used to be. He was dying and he knew it. He had fought it for some time. Tried to pretend it wasn’t happening and, up until this recent trip to the hospital, had believed he just might get away with it. Death, he’d told me was a far-off day. A distant event that did not need considering — except for the getting things in order stuff he needed to take care of.

Seeing him in the hospital. Seeing the devastation the cancer had wrecked upon his body, death was real. It loomed. It called. It lured him in with its seductive promise of release. From pain. From knowing. From being.

I had gone to see him in the hospital hoping it would not be the last visit. Hoping he would be sent home to be amongst us for a few more months. Even weeks would have been okay. But it was not to be. Death came knocking in the early morning hours of May 17^th and he was waiting. Ready to go. He was like that. Determined. And, when he said it was time, it was time.

It was a quiet passing, they said. He was sleeping and slipped over to the other side while dreaming. I hoped he was dreaming of those times when he was able to walk and laugh and share a beer with friends and watch a hockey game and cheer on his favourite team. I hoped his dreams carried him to remembering his trip to Vancouver for the Olympics that he’d been given as a gift on behalf of everyone at the DI. I hoped he was reliving the joy, the exuberance, the excitement and even the walk up to his third floor hotel room which he’d told me was a ‘real doozie’. And I hope that where ever he is now, he is buoyed up by the truth that we will miss him and we will always remember him with love.

I’d visited him just a couple of weeks before at his apartment in Bridgeland. He’d sent me out for smokes. I hadn’t wanted to buy them but how do you deny a dying man? I’d wanted to find a good day for him to do a video interview. The time before the camera wasn’t working and he kept procrastinating and I kept letting it slide. I didn’t want to push him. He was getting frailer by the day and on that day he told me he didn’t have the energy.

And now, he didn’t have the time. “I think I stalled it long enough I don’t have to do it,” he said from the chair beside his hospital bed. He smiled. Through his pain and the oxygen tube, his broken arm and cracked ribs, all side effects of the cancer that was eating at his bones. He smiled and crinkled up his bright blue eyes and exhaled on a laugh that ended in a cough. He cringed with pain and held his body tightly.

I smiled back and wanted to cry.

It just didn’t seem fair. Oh, not the video thing. It didn’t seem fair this pain thing. The dying thing. The leaving this world thing when there’s so much he still wants to do and give and be in this world.

And now, he’d given up on doing or being. He just didn’t want to be of this world.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” I asked him.

“I wish you’d get me a Magnum 357,” he replied.

I wasn’t sure how to respond. “Good thing I don’t know where to get one,” I joked.

He looked at me and laughed. “Louise. Where do you work?”

I laughed with him. “Oh right. Guess I could find someone around the shelter who could help me.”

“Duh. Yeah. Around that place you can get anything if you know who to ask.”

There was an awkward moment. A space that could not be filled as his request echoed between us.

“I brought you something,” I said, pulling a brown manila envelope from my bag.

I opened it and pulled out three tiny folded paper cranes.

“Do you know the story of the 1,000 cranes?” I asked as I carefully expanded the cranes so they could stand on his nightstand. A pink one. Blue one. Golden one.

“Nope,” he dutifully replied.

I smiled. “Then I’m going to tell it to you.”

Sadako Sasaki was three years old the day the atom bomb fell one mile from her home in Hiroshima. Her mother and father and two sisters managed to survive beneath the black cloud of radioactive dust that peppered their world with fear. As time moved away from that devastating day, they moved away from the fear that the bomb had exploded with it and held onto the hope of each new day.

And then, Sadako started school and became an athlete. She was loving and caring and kind and funny and fast and fleet of foot. She did well in school. She did well at track. Until she got sick. At first, it was measles. It went away and they thought that was it. A childhood disease. But then, when she was eleven, they found lumps on her lymph nodes and they gave her a label that didn’t fit well with her, leukemia.

“The atom bomb disease,” her mother said.

Sadako was determined to get better. She began to fold origami cranes. She believed the legend that if you folded 1,000 cranes, you would be granted any wish. She had a wish, a need, a hope, a desire to be free of her disease. And so, she folded.

She didn’t have enough paper. She wandered into rooms throughout the hospital asking for any paper she could find. Medicine wrappings. Old newspapers. Any paper would do. She had a 1,000 cranes to fold and the legend didn’t specify what kind of paper she use.

She reached 100 cranes and kept folding. 200. She kept folding. And the disease kept unfolding itself in her body.

You must rest, they told her.

I can’t she said. I have a plan.

300. 400. 500.

She grew more and more tired. More and more convinced she would be granted her wish.

600. Her fingers were tired and sore. Her body swollen. Her limbs purple with the disease.

And still she folded.

642. 643. And then. 644.

Sadako Sasaki died on October 25, 1955. Some say she finished her 1,000 cranes and kept on going. I have a plan. She said. I cannot stop.

No matter how many she folded, when she was buried, there were 1,000 cranes surrounding her. Some say it was her friends and family who completed her wish. Some say it was her.

No matter who folded those cranes, in their folding a story of hope unfolded with them. A story of possibility. Of peace.

For in her passing, Sadako’s cranes took flight, just as her spirit took flight in every fold she creased to create her 1,000 cranes. Today, the paper origami crane is a symbol of peace around the globe. For school children everywhere, paper crane projects represent our need to create peace, to abolish nuclear weapons, to find hope in this world to overcome war and hatred. Her cranes also live on as a symbol of hope for people who have been touched by cancer. For in every fold lives the belief of Sadako’s plan. Cancer can be cured.

“You remind me of Sadako,” I told him. “You are persistent. Strong. You never give up and you carry a story of hope where ever you go. Thank you for being my friend. Thank you for showing me what it means to live fearlessly.”

“I like the story,” he replied. “I like the cranes.”

“I can’t give you your wish,” I told him.

“I know,” he said. “But I have a plan.”

In the early morning hours of May 17^th, Ron Leslie took one last breath and slipped over to the other side. The plans he made will pass away but the hope he shared so generously, and the love he gave so freely to everyone who crossed his path will always live on. And while we are left behind, we will always remember him as the great man who taught us all how to live this one wild and precious life with integrity, creating joy in everything we do, no matter how small or big our plan.