Sonya Binns First grief, then hope

LOSING a child, any mother in this position will tell you, is one of the most heart-wrenching life experiences. Losing a child to a debilitating disease, after watching them try to fight it is even harder, especially when it’s your girl, the one you’ve watched transition from bobby socks to stockings.

Most people in her position would be soured towards the disease that stole their daughter. Most people, having lost not only a daughter, but a mother and sister to cancer would harbour some resentment.

Not Sonya Binns.

Indeed, this woman remains resolute and strong, laughing and enjoying the simple pleasures life still offers, even after losing one of her two children to thymoma tumour-cancer (cancer of the thymus) a year ago. And not only has she grown, she’s using the experience to, among other things, play an active role in the Relay for Life campaign in an effort to help raise money for the Cancer Society of Jamaica.

This she does by selling candles to persons who have themselves lost loved ones in the cancer fight, or who wanted to support her in her loss. On her own she raised approximately $20,000. She was also among those lighting candles at Relay for Life held at the Police Officers Club on June 9 this year.

Binns still recalls with pain that fateful day in October 2005, when her daughter Francine was diagnosed with cancer. She remembers February 17, 2006 when at 19, the girl passed away in hospital after undergoing three surgeries.

“I try to tell myself it was to go like this. I find peace knowing she did not die from a gunshot or knife- stabbing or rape. I just tell myself the Lord took her out this way. She did not suffer much. She never complained about having excess pain. That is one of the reasons we were so hopeful,” Binns tells all woman as she sits with her remaining child, Sweets, in the comfort of their living room on Barbican Drive, St Andrew.

“I used to tell her ‘if this is your road, take it with a smile. Don’t question God, because He knows best’. Even though she did not

make it, I know she was healed spiritually,” Binns said.

Still, Binns continues to laugh and to live, her friendly demeanour and winning smile being no giveaway of her loss. She feels there is still so much to give thanks for. Sweets is one such reason.

“Sweets is my tower of strength,” she says simply.

Now, Binns works to increase awareness of the dreaded disease, a task she took on years before her daughter passed away.

Thirteen years ago, her mother died of gastric cancer, then in August of 2005, her sister died of multiple myeloma (malignant cancer of the plasma cells). It was two months after her sister’s passing that her daughter was diagnosed with the disease.

The awareness lives on through her daughter’s memory.

“Francine touched many people’s lives while she was alive. But she is doing more in death than she did in life,” Binns said referring to the website www.hope4francine.org, which continues to touch the lives of hundreds of people who comes across it. For now, life centres on Sweets – the girl given the name because she was a sweet bundle of joy at birth – and her outreach work.

Binns, who worked at the Blood Bank and joined partners to send her girls through school as a single mother, is today the top female blood donor in Jamaica, having given blood 59 times and counting.

It was in 1983 that she first donated blood for her sister who was about to give birth. Then after working at the Blood Bank she realised the safety and necessity of giving blood, and so started donating every three months.

“Sometimes people would come to me and ask me to give blood for them or a family member and I would,” she says. “It’s a good thing to give blood. I have encouraged my daughter and my sister. Sweets has given six times so far.”

And this mom, who says she has no regrets about her life, or her choices, says she thanks God for giving her the strength to cope.

Along with her job at Central Medical Lab, where she has worked as a plebotomist/supervisor for 10 years, Binns also does sisterlocking and hair grooming as a second job, elegantly wearing the hairstyle herself. She works from home with her daughter as her assistant.

“I always pray for the faith of Job and the strength of Samson,” she says.

For Sweets: “My mother is a strong black woman. She is a phenomenal woman. I have admired her strength and courage and am proud to be a product of her ovaries!” the 23-year-old gushes.