Finding joy in a bleak Thanksgiving

A dying boy, an inspiring wish
Before dying of leukemia last week, 11-year-old Brenden Foster had put together his very own "Bucket List." Item No. 1 on the boy's things-to-do-before-I-die list?

Feed the homeless.

Brenden, as it turned out, was too sick to handle that one on his own. Diagnosed with blood cancer in August 2005, he suffered a relapse last December. By this summer, doctors told the fifth-grader he hadn't long to live.

Then, earlier this month, KOMO-TV in Seattle aired a report about the boy's wish list. Within days the word had spread all the way down the Pacific Coast, and the response was startling.

In Los Angeles, the Union Rescue Mission, a nonprofit shelter, served 2,500 meals this month to the homeless in Brenden's honor. When it distributed sack lunches to the needy, two words were written on the front of each pouch: "Love Brenden."

KOMO-TV via AP Brenden Foster's dying wish was to help the homeless.

In Seattle, near the suburb of Bothell, where the curly-haired boy lived, volunteers prepared hundreds of sandwiches to give away — ham and cheese, Brenden's favorite, and peanut butter and jelly. (The boy wanted to make sure vegetarian homeless people had something to eat.)

By Thanksgiving, a Seattle campaign collected more than 60,000 pounds of donated food to be distributed among the state's food banks for the holiday. "I don't have much myself," read one note, attached to a donation, "but your wish touched me and I'm going to do what I can."

Says Camille Wells, a spokeswoman with the nonprofit Food Lifeline: "I can't say we would have gotten the same response from people if it wasn't for his request."

Brenden died Friday at home. He told his family he wasn't afraid of death, just sad that he didn't have more time on Earth to do more, says Patricia McMorrow, his grandmother. The boy's other wishes: To save honeybees and clean up Seattle's Puget Sound.

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