Back-to-School Season Triggers Painful Memories for Severn Familiy

Severn resident Elizabeth Raftovich drove home from Johns Hopkins Children’s Center crying, screaming and yelling.

Her 6-year-old daughter Rebekah had lost her hair, been taken out of school and diagnosed with Osteosarcoma, a bone cancer that develops during rapid growth in adolescence.

Throughout the ordeal, Rebekah had never asked “why me?” Her mother wished she could have said the same thing.

Rebekah started kindergarten in 2008, but she didn’t finish the school year. Now that Elizabeth’s youngest daughter, Sarah, started kindergarten last week, Elizabeth and her whole family are confronting some sad and painful memories of their other little girl and her first—and last—days at .

It was March 2009 and after months of chemotherapy and numerous hospital visits, Elizabeth and her husband, Bob, were told by doctors that nothing more could be done to stop their daughter’s cancer.

In that car ride back from the hospital, Elizabeth’s fear of the unknown had become a reality. There was nothing that could save her daughter, but the doctor’s words weren’t enough to quench a mother’s hope.

Just months earlier in kindergarten at Ridgeway Elementary, Rebekah was outgoing, active and compassionate, said Elizabeth. But after Rebekah’s “growing pains” in her shoulder were legitimately diagnosed as bone cancer, her treatment and chemotherapy made Rebekah a shadow of her former vibrant self.

“If anyone was going to change the world, I felt it was going to be her,” Elizabeth said. “She had a real understanding of justice. If something was wrong, she didn’t sit around. She tried to change it.”

Due to the physical toll of chemo, Rebekah stopped attending classes in January 2009.

After the meeting with doctors in March, Elizabeth’s hope remained as she felt that the diagnosis could be wrong. Rebekah was playing outside and even visited Ridgeway Elementary on the second to last day of school. Sadly, as the months rolled on, so did the cancer’s effect on Rebekah’s body.

In June, Bob and Elizabeth Raftovich were told to plan a vacation through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, so the couple planned their one-week trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando to fulfill Rebekah’s wish: to meet Cinderella.

“The doctors knew it was the end,” Elizabeth said. “We didn’t.”

At that time, Rebekah constantly needed an oxygen tank and had to use a wheelchair. “When we arrived, she was exhausted on the first day from all the traveling,” Elizabeth said.

That week, with most of her hair gone and her family by her side, Rebekah met Cinderella. It was a Tuesday.

The next day, Rebekah was admitted to Arnold Palmer Hospital in Orlando due to extreme pain and less than 48 hours after meeting her favorite princess, Rebekah Anna Raftovich died, Thursday, June 25, 2009.

Looking back, Elizabeth said it was a relief to know her daughter was no longer in pain. When asked what Rebekah must have been going through, her mother said, “hell.”

“It was actually beautiful, if that sounds strange,” Elizabeth said. “[Rebekah] was in peace.”

At the hospital, Bob and Elizabeth didn’t leave their daughter’s bedside. When she passed, the two parents called in their other children and said, “Come say goodbye to your sister.”

“We kind of sheltered Jeremiah, John and Sarah [from the ordeal],” Elizabeth said. “They didn’t want to see their sister like that. Seeing her in the hospital was too hard for them.”

Rebekah’s older brother by 20 months, John, had the toughest time coping with the loss, said Elizabeth.

“They were best friends,” she said. “John gets angry more. [As a family] we’re more angry. Communication is hard. I think [John], he’s hurt the most.”

It’s been more than two years since Rebekah passed away on her Make-A-Wish vacation, but Elizabeth said some of the most vivid memories of her daughter were triggered last week when her youngest,  Sarah—now 6 years old—began her first week of kindergarten at the same school that Rebekah had attended.

“All of Sarah’s memories are going to trigger Rebekah’s,” Elizabeth said. “Two days before [the first day of school] was very hard for me. It was like ‘Oh my gosh, this is where Rebekah was.’”

Elizabeth was asked by Ridgeway Elementary if she wanted Sarah to have the same teacher as Rebekah, but she decided not to choose. "I left it up to providence," she said.

A year earlier, she ensured that Sarah attend a different pre-school than Rebekah because they would have gone on all the same field trips and had the same teacher.

Despite the adjustments and wave of emotions, Elizabeth still volunteers at Ridgeway once a week and continues to be involved in her child’s school activities. And although Sarah’s entrance into kindergarten stirs up painful memories, Elizabeth said it’s not all bad.

Sarah brings up Rebekah almost everyday, said Elizabeth. The 6-year-old always wants to know what Rebekah did, what she loved, and what her big sister was really like.

“That’s how Sarah keeps Rebekah alive.”