Jessica Joy Rees – NEGU
by Cheryl, posted on January 12th, 2012 in Just me
The thing about living in our town is that you drive up the main street that runs between our neighborhood and past the elementary school and you see things like this.
I didn’t know Jessica Joy Rees. It didn’t matter. I was out there this morning, cutting ribbons and stapling posters to trees while Xander watched from his stroller. Because that’s the kind of community in which I live. Mothers, kids – everyone reaches out to help one another in hopes of bringing comfort to a family in times of unimaginable sadness.
Jessie was 12 when she died January 5th of an inoperable brain tumor. She attended our elementary school, graduating last year from the six grade. Her father is a pastor at Saddleback Church, two miles down the road from these signs.
Every class in school made a poster of a Joy Jar and many of the kids made the other individual posters, including Sawyer. The signs and ribbons lined the street from her family’s house to the church and each one told the message Jessie no longer can: NEGU. Never, ever give up. She never did. NEGU is a charitable foundation inspired by Jessie, to raise awareness for pediatric cancer, to support the children and their families, and to raise money for research.
When she was sick, she came up with the idea of Joy Jars, after her middle name. She wanted to brighten the day of other kids with cancer at CHOC (Children’s Hospital of Orange County) so she filled jars with fun stuff for kids: play-doh, crayons, little toys. She’d deliver them every week to sick children, hoping to make them smile. Even as she was enduring her own 11-month battle.
She has touched countless lives by what she did while here on earth, and she continues to inspire hope and faith in her passing.
There is now a hole in the middle of a family where a beautiful young girl used to be. And that is something no posters, ribbons or outpouring of love can ever fix.
Tags: Jessica Joy Reese, Joy Jars, NEGU, Saddleback Church
