ELEVEN years ago yesterday, Sina Kami spent her final moments with her 15-year-old daughter Tae Kami. Tae’s passing sparked a flame in her mother’s heart and from this emerged the slogan “Walk On Walk Strong” and the birth of WOWS Kids Fiji — an organisation established to assist children living with cancer and their families. Mrs Kami could not hold back her tears as she relayed the story of Tae’s passing.
“On the night of August 16, 2008 at 11:35pm, I held on to my 15-year-old girl, my daughter Tae Kami,” she said.
“She had been fighting cancer for four years and there were times when she asked ‘mum would you be OK if I go?’ “I told Tae, I’d be fine because once she left us, she would not be going back to the hospital and she would be in a better place.
“This is the journey for us parents who are fighting cancer with our children.
“There comes a time for us to accept it and there are times where we have to let go.”
She said the last words she shared with Tae were the hardest. “I held on to her and said ‘fly away Tae’ and she was gone.”
Mrs Kami said her daughter’s strength, even in the face of death, was the driving force behind WOWS Kids Fiji.
“The work that we do at WOWS Kids Fiji, it’s not about us or the doctor — it is about our children.
This is the message that keeps us going when everything seems to be going wrong, you have to keep going, just walk on walk strong.”
