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Then a visitor showed up. "Do you want to write a song?" asked Anita Kruse, 49, rolling a cart equipped with an electronic keyboard, a microphone, and speakers. Simran stared. "Have you ever written a poem?" Kruse continued. Well, yes, Simran said. Within minutes, she was reading her poem into the microphone. "Some bird soaring through the sky," she said softly. "Imagination in its head …" Kruse added piano chords, a few warbling birds, and finally her own voice. Thirty minutes later, she presented Simran with a CD of her first recorded song.
That was the beginning of Purple Songs Can Fly, a project that has helped more than 125 young patients write and record songs. A composer and pianist who had performed at the hospital, Kruse says the idea of how she could help "came in one flash."
The impact on the kids has been dramatic. One teenage girl, curled in pain in her wheelchair, stood unaided to dance to a hip-hop song she had written. A 12-year-old boy with Hodgkin's disease who rarely spoke stunned his doctors with a gospel song he called "I Can Make It."
"My sessions with the kids are heartbreaking because of the severity of their illnesses," says Kruse. "But they're also exhilarating, when the children are smiling, excited to share their CD with their family."
As for Simran, she's now an active sixth grader and cancer-free. From time to time, she and her mother listen to her song, "Always Remembering," and they remember the "really sweet and nice and loving" lady who gave them a shining moment in a dark hour.
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