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Xavia’s ring
Suzanne Molino Singleton
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Again I place the silver-encased four-prong heart ring on my right-hand third finger as I get dressed for the day. In the center of its’ blackish-green oddly shaped stone is a very pale green heart.
Many pieces in my jewelry collection spin a story, yet this ring tells a favorite.
I wear this particular ring remembering the most powerful story I have covered in my 2.5 years at The Catholic Review. A story of a courageous little girl named Xavia who underwent a heart transplant in January 2007.
The first day I wore my heart ring, having recently purchased it from my jeweler friend Cindy, was the day I drove north on I-95 to CHOP – the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia – to interview Xavia and her mom, Nicolle, in the place they had impatiently waited for 10 months for a new heart.
It was as if Cindy designed the heart ring precisely for me to cover little Xavia’s story, as a sort of armor of protection to encase my adult heart as I strived not to cry or become emotionally attached during the interview.
It didn’t help that I had known Nicolle and her parents since we were good little Catholic girls together under the watch of the nuns at St. Joseph School, Fullerton, long ago in a year I won’t admit here. Or the fact that I have a daughter the same age as Xavia.
Within this happy ending heart story, though, is the saga we’ll never know – from whom Xavia’s new heart originated and about the mourning family who lost the child once attached to it.
Xavia is now a sixth grader at St. Joseph’s who enjoys Girl Scouts and middle school dances. Nicolle reports her daughter’s health is well, she has gained weight, and looks “fantastic.”
Each time I wear my heart ring, I am reminded to pray for Xavia, living a hearty pre-teen life, and I shoot up an extra prayer flare to God about His one little angel who doesn’t need his or her human heart in heaven and for the sad family who greatly misses their child.
Human life is fragile as we are reminded daily, yet the most fragile piece of the human body has to be that pulsing, alive, beating organ – the most breakable – the heart.
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