Always and forever
In 2018, nine-year-old Abbey Tran was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder. Her mother, Krista Lewicki, shares how Abbey’s life, and tragic death, have inspired a community to spread love
In her first year playing hockey, Abbey didn’t win a single game. She didn’t care, though. She had a positive attitude and was always friendly, always persevering, always bringing silliness to the team. In their final game, they were down by seven. In the last two minutes, she was still working harder than I had ever seen her work. She was just that kid.
She tried everything. She tried surfing. She played guitar and sang. She planned her own guerilla-art project. She filled balloons with messages of kindness — things like “You are special” or “You are important” — and glitter and confetti and then set them free to be enjoyed by strangers. When she was six years old, I gave her a gratitude journal. She wrote, “I am grateful because my family loves me.”
At home, she was a great big sister to her baby brother, Weston. The day she found out we were expecting, she wrote me thank-you cards and proclaimed it was the best day of her life. We treasure all the “number-one brother” certificates she presented him with.
One of my proudest moments was when she walked with the outreach group Street Patrol. It’s a three-hour walk, and she was an extremely shy kid, but she went up to everybody. She loved it, later asking, “Can we do Street Patrol again?” But then she got sick.
First, Abbey was under the weather with a fever. We thought it was just the flu. After multiple hospital visits, doctors feared it was leukemia. Then they thought it was lupus; I bought her longsleeved bathing suits to protect her from the sun.
There were so many questions and so many tests. You become an overnight doctor in a situation like this, asking for different blood counts that you had never heard of before. When they said it was hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH), I thought, “It’s not cancer — great.” We had no idea how devastating HLH is, a condition where the immune system attacks its healthy cells.
We all hoped and believed she would improve. Her doctors did too. But the disease had done too much damage. After just three weeks, she was gone.
How lucky were we to get those nine and a half years with her? If we could just stand on the rooftops every single day shouting her name, we would. We started the charity Abbey’s Goal as our way of doing that, supporting initiatives that channel Abbey’s passion for giving back. Abbey’s Goal is about spreading love. For Valentine’s Day 2021, we invited the Abbey’s Goal community to make their own valentines to be distributed to folks in long-term-care homes who may be feeling isolated. One person finger-painted 75 valentines with their baby.
In the past two years, we have been able to support Indigenous girls’ hockey teams and celebrate those who share Abbey’s generous spirit. In 2020, we donated $5,000 to children at Romero House, a local organization that welcomes newcomer families. When we held a toy drive for Abbey’s 12th birthday in November, we received thousands of toys to donate to a women’s shelter.
At the start of the pandemic, we began selling strips of rainbowcoloured plastic for people to decorate trees in a show of support for front-line workers. We raised more than $20,000, which we donated to The Stop Community Food Centre.
Abbey embodied joy, goodness and light every day of her life. Now we hope her legacy can inspire others to live with that same purpose. Our son, Weston, is still pretty little, but we talk about Abbey with him every day. While he was filling out questions in his birthday book when he turned four, we asked him, “What happens when people die?” He didn’t even look up. He said, “We still love.”