Tractor Parade

Jacob Vanderlaan of Sussex, New Brunswick loved tractors. After he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, the 9-year-old made his request to the Children’s Wish Foundation. He wanted to visit the John Deere factory in Moline, Illinois.

But the boy everyone knows as ‘Jake’ is too ill to travel, so the tractors came to him Friday as the extended family that is the farming community around Sussex organized a parade past the boy’s home as he lay on a folded-down seat at the living room window.

Wrapped in a fleece, farm-themed blanket, a stuffed cow on his lap, Jake shielded his eyes from the sun with a black cap in one hand, waving excitedly with the other at the familiar faces behind the wheels of the passing farm vehicles.

For one afternoon, the family was able to forget the cancer that mom Julie Vanderlaan described as “extremely aggressive”, which has left her son heavily medicated to fight through the pain.

Over 50 farmers rode tractors and other farm equipment to Jake’s home -they were the same farmers who had been helping the family in every way possible since Jacob’s illness was diagnosed.

“I never expected this,” Julie said. “People are offering to do anything they can, they are just showing up every day to help. It all means so much.

“It’s overwhelming. It just makes you so appreciative to be a part of this type of community.”

Jacob died the day after the tractor parade. Link -via Fark

(image credit: Cindy Wilson/Telegraph-Journal)