Live for Lily Foundation has donated almost $1.6 million to Children’s Cancer Institute
Children’s Cancer Institute shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Ten years ago today, Lily Hester tragically lost her life to a rare liver cancer. If not for her cancer, Lily would be celebrating her 19th birthday this year.
The Live for Lily Foundation was created to honour Lily and is committed to ensuring that we will see an end to childhood cancer.
To date, the Foundation has donated almost $1.6 million to Children’s Cancer Institute and this year has continued funding for the first Live for Lily Senior Scientist, Emmy Dolman.
Aaron Hester, Lily’s father and Founder of the Live for Lily Foundation, shared a special message,
‘Sunday 11th August marks 10 years since I spoke my last words with my daughter Lily.
It’s hard to believe it’s been so long considering my memories of that day are still so vivid. I’m sure other people that have lost someone close to them in the most traumatic of circumstances will know what I’m talking about when I say I can remember everything about Lily’s last day, from the weather to the sounds in that room, and the words that we last spoke. The end of Lily’s life marked the beginning of the Live for Lily foundation, even if I didn’t know it yet.
Life as we knew it took a whole new direction from Lily’s passing and for a long time everything was just grey, life didn’t bring any real emotional response, we were just numb.
The beginning of the Live for Lily foundation allowed us to re-channel our energy into something that gave meaning to Lily’s loss, it was a way of giving purpose to Lily’s short time with us, and it allowed us to feel connected to her in some small way.
Life will never be as good for me as when Lily was part of it, but there’s nothing I can do to change that, unfortunately. What I do think about though, is that if Lily is actually seeing what’s going on here with the Live for Lily foundation, a foundation that came about because of the little girl that she was, she’d say, ‘Good job Dadda’.”