If you know Eli, he is mischievous, playful, and creative. He also likes to tell people what to do. The week after Halloween, at his chemo appointment, he was talking with one of the doctors about trick or treating. The doctor had only been living in her current home for less than a year, so she asked the neighbors about what to expect in terms of the quantity of trick or treaters. She bought a bunch of full size candy bars to hand out and waited for the kids to start coming. And waited…and waited some more. Well, not one child came by to trick or treat.

Eli was very sympathetic to her disappointment in being stuck with all those candy bars that her boyfriend had been eating and leaving wrappers laying around.

Eli, of course, made the obvious suggestion to bring them to the clinic to share with the kids. After harassing her about it a couple weeks, he decided to write a note to her boyfriend. I don’t have the original, but Eli dictated it to me and I made him copy it in his own handwriting. The correspondence below happened over the course of multiple weeks. I edited names for privacy.

Letter 1:

Letter 2:

The letter from The Candy King was accompanied by a gallon size bag of a variety of candy bars.

Letter 3:

These are the things that make cancer stuff bearable.