By Tina D’ Alessandro

My eight-year-old son, Jamie, died of cancer. He was the second of our four children, all of them boys. Some weeks later, I was asked to tell a group of our friends how my perception of heaven had been changed by the experience of Jaime’s sickness and death, this is pretty much what I said.

When Jaime was diagnosed with Burkitt’s lymphoma in August 1996, the prognosis was very good. That was a great help. Because it would be nearly impossible for parents to put their child through chemotherapy and radiation treatments without trusting that the child would be cured by the procedures, Jamie’s course of treatment also included a bone marrow transplant.