Young friends with cancer share sweet embrace in touching photo
PITTSBURGH, Penn. -- For young cancer patients Maliyah Jones and Madelina DeLuca, the hug they shared was an honest moment of comfort. Maliyah's mom, though, saw something more: a beautiful expression of love that had to be shared.
Tazz Jones saw her daughter and the friend embracing and decided the moment needed to be captured. She hopes the picture will inspire others going through similar battles.
"This is the perfect example of love," Jones wrote on Facebook, where she posted the photo. "So many people have been telling me to submit this picture, get it blown up, and that it touched there [sic] hearts."
Jones told ABC the photo was taken on the day the girls met at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, but they were playing together like old friends.
"She and Maliyah instantly clicked as if they knew one another for some time," Jones told ABC of her daughter's new friend Madelina.
Maliyah, 5, has been fighting Stage 4 Neuroblastoma for three years, her mom explained on her fundraising page, while Madelina, 2, was recently diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia, according to her fundraising page.
The two were playing in a ninth-floor lounge with a beautiful view of the city, Jones recalled. After some time playing, the girls sat looking out the window together in a peaceful embrace.
"At that moment I starred [sic] in awe!" Jones told ABC. "I wondered what they were feeling; what they were thinking and how they felt."
It was in that moment that Jones realized that the budding friendship stood for something bigger.
"Through sickness and health there will always be someone by your side weather [sic] you know them or not. My heart filled with joy and hope," she wrote, "and I knew that I cannot just be the only person to see this."
Jones added that Maliyah, who she called "rambunctious, adventurous and sweet as honey," is headed to the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York for treatment that they hope will cure her. Meanwhile, Madelina's mom posted on Facebook that the 2-year-old has finished chemotherapy.
Maliyah's mom hopes that, no matter how many people the photo reaches, it brings positive emotions to those who need it.
"I really want this picture to be seen all over the world because it expresses so many things: friendship, sickness, love, comfort & support to name a few," she said. "I want people to feel what I felt the moment I took the photo."
Images used with permission.
