By Michelle Carter
(First published in Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise, September 11, 2002. )
No one who lost a loved one on Sept. 11, 2001 could have imagined it would be a death so violent — especially Candice Phillips. She had hoped the cancer would take her 10-year-old son quietly, perhaps in his sleep.
Instead, Ricky Bedford choked to death during a chemotherapy-induced seizure at his home. Instead of spending the day glued to the television like much of America, Phillips spent the day either by her son’s side, or on the phone with relatives, telling them to come and say their goodbyes. Most didn’t make it before he passed that afternoon. She also spent much of the day arguing with first responders- she begged them to stop his seizures so Ricky could die at home, peacefully, but they said they could not perform such life-extending measures without transporting him back to the hospital.
“It was such a surreal day,” Phillips said. “It didn’t seem possible the attacks were happening, just like it didn’t seem possible that I could ever lose my son.”
The one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington is going to be much different for Phillips than it will be for the rest of America. Instead of watching a television documentary or attending a candlelight vigil, she’ll be traveling to Children’s Hospital and The Jimmy Fund at the Dana Farber Cancer Center in Boston to thank her son’s doctors and nurses for their valiant efforts during the 14 months he battled T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Ricky was the oldest of Phillips’ four children with former husband Richard Bedford. Joey, now 8, is angry that the brother he idolized was taken so soon, and doesn’t know how to respond when people call him “the oldest one.” Six-year-old twins Jeramy and Joshua don’t say much about their brother anymore, other than the fact that he’s “sleeping.” Their severe autism doesn’t allow for much more communication than that.
Unlike others who lost their loved ones on Sept. 11, in a way, Phillips considers herself lucky. She had 14 months to prepare for her son’s death. Fourteen months to tell him how much she loved him and how important he was to her. She had 14 months to prepare him for the inevitable, reminding him about the angels who would be there waiting for him, and that if he got scared he just had to call out for his grandfather, Samuel Phillips, who would hold his hand and take care of him.
Phillips said she is even luckier for the 10 years she had with her eldest son. Long before he became ill, he was wise beyond his years, and full of love and integrity, she said.
“He was always so inquisitive,” Phillips said. “He would ask questions to the point where I didn’t know the answers anymore.”
His curiosity was so strong, he went out of his way to try to understand the disease eating away at his body. He viewed his own bone-marrow specimen under a microscope with his oncologist, Dr. Stephen Margosian, and spent time in the lab at Children’s Hospital, quizzing lab technicians about what they were looking for and how their equipment worked.
“They had never had a child in the lab before. Everyone just stopped working, and was watching him,” Ricky’s mother said. “They told me afterward that they had no idea just how important their jobs were. They said it made their jobs more meaningful.”
Ricky Bedford also revitalized his school. Chuck Pretti, principal at John R. Briggs Elementary School, said if anyone was upset over Ricky’s diagnosis, Ricky didn’t let it last long. When he did return to school after a round of chemotherapy, he visited different classrooms to teach other kids about his disease and its treatment.
“He used to wear a baseball cap when he first came back,” Pretti said. “Then one day he just took it off. He decided being bald didn’t bother him. He didn’t want to have to wear a hat — he just wanted to be a regular kid.”
But Ricky Bedford was far from being a regular kid. His family referred to him as “The Miracle Kid,” because he survived so much that he shouldn’t have. While most healthy adults can only handle two rounds of chemotherapy in a year, Ricky underwent five rounds in only 14 months. He survived a ruptured appendix, and multiple surgeries.
One evening, Ricky implored his mother to attend a birthday party held in her honor instead of staying with him at the hospital.
“He said he didn’t want to ruin my night, and that he wanted me to have fun,” Phillips said. Ricky said that while he was in the intensive care unit, having suffered a cardiac arrest only hours before.
Memories like that one will fill Candice Phillips’ mind as the Sept. 11 anniversary approaches.
Every time she hears that date, or sees a flag, Phillips thinks of her son.
She thinks about him riding a two-wheeled bicycle when he was only 2 years old. She remembers him water skiing with his father, or playing ice hockey with his friends. She recalls the times he entertained the other sick children during chemotherapy treatments, with the same love and care he showed his own siblings. She remembers how brave and strong he was, and how he often knew as much about his own treatment and medication regimen as the nurses taking care of him.
Like many Americans, Candice Phillips still struggles to comprehend what happened that day. Like much of America, Candice Phillips thinks of Sept. 11 as the day her life changed forever.
“I just wish his death wasn’t so violent,” Phillips said. “I guess that was just a violent day.”