My name is Marieet and these are my goals for school.
Number one, I would like to meet some new friends.
Number two, I'd like to be more involved in school activities.
Number three, I'd like to learn the names of the students in my class.
Number four, I'd like to get to know the students in my other classes.
Number five, I'd like to keep up work-wise in class.
Number six, I'd like to stay being a loyal friend to my old friends.
Friendship was particularly important to Marieet.
She was really involved in the temporal, the now.
She wanted to belong, she wanted to belong to the school.
So she vested everything into her friendships and thus she was an awesome friend.
She came into class every day even though she was struggling through chemotherapy and
she just had this contagious smile.
Marie was my older sister, she was about two years older than me.
She had cancer three times throughout her life and then she had a stroke during surgery
and so she was paralyzed in her left half and then she passed away probably about seven
months later in December when she was 15.
Trying to see the redemption of what could possibly could happen from a 15-year-old dying
from brain cancer.
The main thing that affected her was the stroke, so she was in a wheelchair and so she took
special ed classes.
I just noticed how she was having a hard time getting friends outside of her classes and
that's how there's kind of like a social barrier between the two.
Jacob is a pretty incredible young man and he approached me one day last year and he
asked me to look at a business proposal for the Bridge Builders Club.
The Bridge Builders Club is a new club where we foster friendship and just get communication
going between like general ed and special education students.
It's providing an opportunity for people to learn others' names, it's providing an
opportunity for relationships to be deepened.
So I think what Jacob has helped foster is just like putting your arms around these kids
and saying, you're okay.
I think it's particularly redemptive seeing something good that I see as a result of Jacob
and his sister.
I see it as a continuation of Reed's story.
Seeing the other person is important because we're all valued in God's eyes and everyone
regardless of their ability or their disability, they need to know that they're cared for.
They are important, they are significant and that there's a need for us to be connected
with one another.
Maria really liked her dog, Emily, who we still have.
That's probably one of her favorite things.
Yeah, she gave her dog to me when she passed away.
I think that Jacob putting this together would have been a perfect way for Marie to have
met her goals.
Kids loving each other with the barriers being brought down.
