World Scene: United States

Dying girl's notes inspire book

With just days to live and too sick to speak, a 6-year-old girl hid notes and drawings all over her house telling her parents and her sister again and again "I love you."

While Elena Desserich was writing the notes, her parents were keeping a diary so her younger sister Gracie would one day understand what happened after Elena was diagnosed with brain cancer. They transformed that diary into a book entitled Notes Left Behind, which was released this week. Elena's parents found the first notes in a backpack. Others were hidden between books, in the corner of dresser drawers, between dishes in the china cabinet or between photos stacked away in boxes. "We started to collect them and they would all say 'I love you Mom, Dad and Grace.' To this day, we keep finding them," Keith Desserich told WLWT television in Cincinnati, Ohio.