ShareThisKNOXVILLE, Tenn. - Hazel-eyed Samuel Anderson, 4, will be home with his family for Christmas. However, this Christmas homecoming is not the Waltons-esque gathering with songs and trimmings.
Just the simple fact that their son, Samuel, will be home is enough for Roy and Sylvia Anderson and their seven other children.
Samuel, the youngest, died of cancer Nov. 3 after a three-year fight against a rare form of a disease defined as childhood neuroblastoma.
The National Cancer Institute website describes neuroblastoma as predominantly a tumor of early childhood, with two-thirds of the cases occurring in children age 5 years or younger. The tumor originates in the adrenal medulla gland above the kidneys or near the spinal column.
His father says that in the beginning Samuel's stomach seemed pudgy. At 16 months old, his tummy measured almost 27 inches around.
"His stomach looked like a basketball," says Roy Anderson.
When father and mother took him to an emergency room, a doctor sent them straight to East Tennessee Children's Hospital, the cancer ward.
That was in August 2007. From that point on, the Anderson family was in the grip of the twin specters of a fast-growing disease and a faltering economy.
"We were told that Samuel had a 10 to 20 percent chance to make it to short-term remission," says Roy Anderson.
"For me, personally, at first you don't believe that this is a disease your children will get."
At Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, doctors discovered that the disease had metastasized from Samuel's head almost to his toes, from his blood to his bones.
Then the bottom really fell out. Roy Anderson was a cabinetmaker by trade. Over the years, he had also become a respectable homebuilder and was thriving.
He and his large family lived in a 3,400-square-foot home on 18 acres of land. He earned a good living and had money in the bank. He owned a fancy super-cab designer pickup truck and owed nothing to his reditors, he says.
He had even been able to build a home nearby for his father.
Life was good. Then, the housing market tanked and some of Anderson's bank loans backed by speculative houses he was constructing soured dramatically.
At the same time the economy flatlined, Samuel's health plummeted. In fact, the family was told that a complete medical protocol to handle such a cancer would cost an estimated $3.7 million, and still the outcome might not be good.
Being a builder, Roy was self-insured. He borrowed against his home equity to continue the struggle in his homebuilding businesses and to provide medical treatment for his son.
Then when Samuel became even worse, "everything stopped," says Roy Anderson.
Samuel's staggering medical bills -- rounds of chemotherapy, stem transplant -- and the construction loans against his home eventually bankrupted Anderson and his family.
In concussive quickness, Roy lost his truck, his home and began looking for a place to rent. His father gave up the house Roy had built for him, letting Roy move his family into what had been a two-bedroom home.
"At one point, my net worth was $1.5 million. Now, it's like $1.50," says Anderson, a proud and religious man who does not like the idea of having to ask for anything.
Samuel's cancer became a vine, entwining the child's organs, filling spaces behind his lungs and chest, running up to his brain and down his spine.
"For the first time in my life, this was something that I couldn't fix," says Anderson. "I felt helpless. I didn't want to live."
He turned to his faith.
Anderson says he prayed for help. Without it, "I wasn't going to make it."
And almost as suddenly as the tumor appeared, it began to shrink, to maybe golf ball size.
At one point, with the tumors contracting, Samuel's parents decided to take Samuel off chemotherapy. This move, says Roy Anderson, did not meet with approval from Samuel's doctors.
But, the father says, for about 15 months, Samuel was in remission, or so it seemed.
Then, while playing in his favorite place in the backyard -- near a swing set his father built -- with his sister Bethany, a special-needs child, Samuel hurt his leg. The tibia snapped. The cancer was in his bones.
"When he was in remission, I honestly thought Samuel would live to bury me," says Roy Anderson. "Then the cancer ate through the bone ... ."
The end was closing in and it was as if Samuel knew it better than his parents did. Shortly before Samuel died, he talked to his mother about death.
"I might go see Jesus," he told his mother. "When you die, Mama," Samuel said one day, "I'll come find you in heaven."
After the boy's death last month, a variety of fundraisers and community donations are helping to pay for a child-size mausoleum for Samuel. When the 4,000-pound seashell-pink granite structure arrives, it will be located where Samuel played with his brothers and sisters, says his mother.
The 5-feet-by-3-feet tall structure will face the steps leading up to the home's front door, as if awaiting Samuel.
Because of his illness, the family decided to have an early Christmas for Samuel. He helped to pick out the Christmas tree, which is lighted and placed in a front room of the home.
Roy says he and his wife wanted a large family and that now that they have lost Samuel, he has learned a very important lesson.
"This has taught me how to love," says Roy Anderson. "I value my children, of course, but I have learned that you need to spend as much time with them as you can. I valued every minute God gave me with Samuel."
Anderson says he may have gotten closer to Samuel than with his
He and a friend are trying to start a landscaping business, and he does some carpentry work.
"We haven't gone without through all this. We don't need anything," he says proudly, although he and his two oldest sons sell firewood to make extra money. He says they have enough money in the bank to cover a utility bill.
(Email writer Fred Brown, a freelance contributor to the Knoxville, Tenn. News Sentinel at brownf08(at)gmail.com.)
