Annah: How I Met Cindy

So, I’m going to share how I met Cindy.

Cindy was at AOL with my brother, Philip Kim. He often talked about his “kooky” friend and how talented she was a designer, which says a lot. He rarely spoke of others in such warm and glowing terms.

In 2006, we found out that my brother had MDS, which bloomed into leukemia. He was treated at the NIH because the only way to save him was to do a stem cell transplant and….thank God but I was a perfect bone marrow match. Over the course of three very hard years, he fought his leukemia but it took over his body just as I watched Cindy’s cancer took over her body.

Anyway, it was in this context that I met Cindy, who through her kindness and devotion to Philip became my sister. You see, each time he and I did a bone marrow/stem cell transplant, he was hospitalized for months. He did this for three years. Over the course of those three years, Cindy was the only one outside our family who would visit him in his hospital room at the NIH.

But it wasn’t that she would just visit him by bringing him flowers or food from the outside world. She would stay the whole day with him and bring him craft projects for them to do together, coloring books, videos for him to watch on his lap top. Cindy brought HER world to Philip during her visits. Who would do this?! What kind of person?

Through her selfless acts of love, she became my sister. She had also just met Matt, so both of them came to Philip’s Memorial Dinner I hosted for his friends a month after we lost Philip. She also went his cemetery after I came back to NYC.

Since that time, we’ve shared our path to marriage and our journey to get pregnant and have a family. Like everyone on this blog, I can honestly say I am a better person for having Cindy in my life.

Matt, Apollo, Orion - my heart is broken and I share in your loss. I lost my sister tonight.