Justin Cook | The Roanoke Times

Brian Harman visits the grave of his son, Chance, last month at the Topeco Church of the Brethren cemetery in Willis, Floyd County. The 4-year-old was diagnosed with a tumor last December and died in July. ''I lost my best friend,'' Harman said.

• Hear the Harman family talk about the past year

FLOYD -- "He's got a large mass on the side of his head."

Mass.

The word pierced Brian Harman's heart.

A large mass.

On the side of his head.

This was his 4-year-old son the doctor spoke of. This was the little blond boy he took to basketball practice. This was his best friend.

"He's got a tumor," the doctor continued. "He's going to need an MRI and maybe surgery tomorrow."

Tumor. Surgery. Tomorrow.

"All right, what do we do, where do we go?" Harman asked the gastrologist.

It was Dec. 14, 2006, a day that marked the beginning of a year of family tragedy for Harman and his wife, Desirae.

Surrounded by her husband and Chance's grandparents in a private waiting room inside Carilion Roanoke Community Hospital, Desirae Harman began to weep. The family sat virtually motionless. They were all too shaken to hug and comfort one another.

"This is not real," Harman said as she held and kissed her little boy. "This is not right."

Brian Harman didn't cry. At that moment, he couldn't. All he could think about was finding his son the best treatment.

Only two months earlier, Chance Wesley Harman showed no signs of sickness.

Then, one mid-October morning, he vomited and spent the rest of the day on the couch.

Desirae Harman called Chance's pediatrician, who recommended monitoring his temperature and fluid intake.

"He's probably got strep throat or the flu," Harman thought.

The next week, Chance vomited again, one entire day.

The Harmans were told during multiple trips to the pediatrician that their son had a lingering bug.

By late November, the vomiting hadn't stopped.

"Maybe he's got acid reflux like me and some of the men in my family," Brian Harman reasoned.

A barium swallow X-ray to examine his upper digestive tract traced no acid reflux.

By December, Chance was vomiting more frequently.

The family doctor recommended a CT scan just to rule out a tumor. Blood tests had already come back normal.

"Well, that's good," Brian Harman told his wife. "At least it's not cancer."

But the CT scan traced a large tumor on the right side of the brain near a ventricle.

The next day the Harmans met with a brain surgeon at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital.

Her synopsis was more encouraging. From its location, it appeared the tumor might be benign and seemed to be slow-growing, the surgeon told them.

Chance would need it removed in two weeks. But there was hope.

Hope.

"We'll give you two weeks," the surgeon said. "Enjoy Christmas."

Common ties

Brian and Desirae Harman were married June 17, 2000. They met as freshmen at Lynchburg College.

Chance was born Oct. 22, 2002. A daughter, Destiny, came May 30, 2005.

The Harmans, both 30, live in the Willis community of Floyd County, where Brian Harman and his father, Allen, run a building supply store.

Desirae Harman was a kidney dialysis technician at Montgomery County Dialysis Center in Blacksburg until Destiny's birth. She is now a stay-at-home mom.

For the past four years, Brian Harman also has been the boys basketball coach at Floyd County High School, where he played and coached under present-day Floyd girls coach Alan Cantrell.

One of his teammates at Floyd was Alan Cantrell's son, Travis Cantrell. Last season, Travis Cantrell joined his father's coaching staff on the girls team.

Like Brian and Desirae Harman, Travis and wife Laura Cantrell had two small children, Joshua and A.J.

Brian Harman often crossed paths with Alan and Travis Cantrell at preseason practices a year ago.

Then the season started. Then came those words.

Mass. Tumor.

And basketball took a back seat.

Tearful parting

On the day that Chance's tumor was found, the Floyd County boys basketball team had an evening practice.

With a heavy heart, Harman walked into the gymnasium where assistant coach Timmy Slaughter and the players had assembled at center court. By then, they all knew about Chance.

"I don't know how long I'll be gone," the coach told his team. "I may be gone a day. I may be gone a week. Or I may be gone all year."

Players cried and consoled their hurting coach, a man who often brought them into his home for pregame meals.

Chance was a regular at team meals and a frequent guest at practices and open gyms. Word of his illness troubled players, who remember shooting hoops with him on a miniature goal at the Harmans' home.

"It was like every one of us was a brother to him," senior power forward Kaleb Gallimore said.

Slaughter took the helm at Floyd until Harman could return. But it wasn't the same. The players missed their coach, and the team struggled through a one-win season.

'Some bad news'

Brian and Desirae Harman were walking through New River Valley Mall in Christiansburg on Dec. 22 when they bumped into Laura Cantrell and her mother, Saundra Pratt.

By then word of Chance's diagnosis had spread throughout the Floyd community.

"We don't know what to say except we're thinking about you and praying for you," they said.

Four days later Desirae Harman saw Gayle Cantrell, the wife of Alan Cantrell, at the Christiansburg Wal-Mart.

Gayle Cantrell said that her 3-year-old grandson, Joshua, had recently been vomiting in the mornings and experiencing headaches. The symptoms sounded too familiar.

Vomiting.

"I don't mean to startle you," Harman said. "Just make sure you get him checked."

When the Harmans' phone rang early Friday morning, Dec. 29, it was Jason Dalton, a family friend.

From the tremor in his friend's voice, Brian Harman braced to hear the worst.

"I've got some bad news," Dalton said.

Joshua had a brain tumor.

Prognosis dims

The day Chance went into surgery was one of the hardest of Brian and Desirae Harman's lives.

They had taken their son to Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters in Norfolk at the suggestion of a friend.

Coincidentally, Joshua took Chance's spot at Roanoke Memorial on Dec. 29, when Chance's operation had been originally scheduled.

Joshua's condition was more urgent. He was dehydrated and could not keep down any food.

His tumor contained an aggressive cancer known as anaplastic medulloblastoma that required emergency surgery.

Chance had been diagnosed with a rare childhood brain tumor, called atypical teratoid/rhabdoid tumor.

This tumor, though almost always fatal in children 3 and under, is known to be more treatable in older children.

An MRI at King's Daughters showed Chance's tumor had spread to his spine. It was malignant.

Chance needed surgery immediately. But there was a possibility, the doctors warned, that the operation might not be successful. There was also a chance that he could die on the operating table.

"I want Mommy and I want Daddy!" Chance screamed, his arms sticking out for his parents, as he was taken to surgery.

The operation lasted eight hours, but surgeons were able to remove only 20 percent of the tumor.

The medical staff at King's Daughters told the Harmans to go home and take pictures of their son. He could die in a matter of weeks. Or days.

A matter of weeks.

Days.

"We thought that was it," Brian Harman said.

Back in Floyd County, Chance and Joshua became a rallying point for the community.

Within days of the news of their diagnoses, supporters staged a candlelight vigil at the high school. Friends of the two families joined in launching a Web site, www.samefight.org, to raise money and provide daily updates on the boys. Fundraisers sprang up at rival high schools.

During his stay at King's Daughters, Chance got a special visit from his aunt, Sherrie Conner, and her 10-year-old son, Zack, who lived in Bedford County.

Conner, Desirae Harman's older sister by 13 years, had a bond with her sibling that extended beyond bloodlines.

Conner's high school sweetheart, Jeff, had died of cancer at 19 just months after the couple married. Few could relate to Chance's fight like she could.

Conner and her son would visit Chance several more times in the coming months.

On several occasions, they came with her boyfriend, Louis O'Brien, whom she began dating in the late summer of 2006. The couple appeared happy.

But there was tension brewing that no one knew about.

And with Chance sick, Conner wouldn't dare add to her sister's worries.

End of the road

When Brian and Desirae Harman arrived at Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center on Jan. 11, Gayle Cantrell was waiting in the lobby. Both the Harmans and Cantrells had decided to seek more aggressive treatment for their sons at Duke. Joshua had been admitted two days earlier to begin radiation treatments. Chance would have a second surgery and then begin outpatient radiation.

For several weeks, the boys crossed paths almost every morning. They played together.

Travis and Laura Cantrell and Brian and Desirae Harman rented apartments in the same Durham, N.C., complex. The families grew close.

But their children took different turns.

While Chance's body seemed to respond to the treatments, Joshua grew fatigued. He later had a stroke and was placed in the intensive care unit. On Feb. 26, he died.

In the coming weeks, the Harmans didn't tell Chance about Joshua. Nor did Chance ask. But every night, he would still call Joshua's name during bedtime prayers. Chance would also ask God to heal his own "booboo."

He continued to show signs of improvement. He would ride his bike around the apartment complex. He would hit golf balls with his dad. He couldn't wait to go to Wal-Mart.

After 31 days of outpatient radiation, an MRI confirmed what the Harmans had hoped for: The tumor had shrunk considerably.

The family spent most of the next six weeks back home in Willis. Chance wouldn't begin chemotherapy until late April.

They went to Walt Disney World during the break. There, Chance did what any child would. He rode a roller coaster. He shot basketball in an arcade. He visited the Animal Kingdom. Though Chance had lost his hair, he hadn't lost his zest for life.

"He was normal," Brian Harman said. "We knew we had it beat."

The chemotherapy was to be the final leg of the treatments. If Chance continued to progress, treatments would conclude the first week in August.

But during the second week of chemotherapy, Brian and Desirae Harman noticed Chance wasn't himself. He didn't have his trademark energy. He had developed a twitch in his right arm. Over the next month, his condition worsened. He suffered two seizures. He said he was in pain.

On July 4, Brian and Desirae Harman took Chance to the 10th floor of Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center to watch fireworks from a window. Outside were flags dedicated to cancer survivors.

"Do you want to beat this thing?" Desirae Harman asked her first-born child.

"I'm tired, Momma," he said.

"Do you want to beat this thing or do you want to go to heaven?"

Chance looked upward into his mother's eyes.

"Momma, I'm ready to go to heaven," he said.

An MRI the next day showed a "cancer coating" had begun to spread through Chance's body, triggering his pain. The doctors gave him no more than a month to live.

A month. No more.

It was then that Chance's parents decided to tell him about Joshua.

"Joshua's in heaven," they said. "Y'all will be playing."

Two days later, on the morning of July 6, Chance died.

The Harmans returned home for the funeral.

Brian Harman began holding open gyms for players again.

He went back to work at the family building-supply business.

Desirae started baby-sitting.

The family found comfort through church, the community and friends.

And life slowly began getting back to normal.

Tragedy strikes again

Sept. 14 was one of those normal days. Desirae Harman was cooking breakfast for her daughter, Destiny, and another child, Madison.

Then the phone rang.

Harman immediately recognized the panicked voice on the other end of the line as her father's.

"Sherrie's been shot!" Ray Goff screamed.

"What?"

Goff repeated himself.

"No way! No way, Dad!" Harman yelled.

Her sister had been fatally shot multiple times in the chest in her Bedford County home that morning. Louis O'Brien, the man who had accompanied Conner on visits to see Chance in the hospital, was suspected in the shooting.

O'Brien died at Roanoke Memorial later that day of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He had shot through a glass door and entered Conner's Centerville home armed, Harman was told later by authorities.

Zack was OK after running into the bathroom with his mother's cellphone, which started ringing coincidentally when the first shots were fired.

It was his grandmother, Becky Goff. Zack told her someone had been shot and hung up the phone. He then called 911.

A SWAT team member later pulled him out of a window to safety.

After the call from her father, Harman knew only that her sister had been shot. There was a possibility she might still be alive. Her instincts told her otherwise.

"Not my sister, too!" she cried aloud.

Harman dropped to her knees and began to weep and pray.

It had been a little more than two months since she had lost her son. Now this.

Conner had broken off her relationship with O'Brien in July. That's all the family really knew. What they didn't know was that Conner, out of fear, had obtained a permit to carry a handgun and had installed new deadbolts in her home.

"She never told us this side," Harman said. "We look back now and we see things now. But she was protecting the family. We had been through so much with Chance that she would never tell us that she was being threatened."

The healing

Chance. Sherrie Conner. Joshua.

All taken in nine months.

All so dearly loved.

All so deeply missed.

Chance is buried at the Topeco Church of the Brethren cemetery in Willis, about a mile from Brian and Desirae Harman's home. Desirae Harman visits every couple of days, usually with Destiny.

Often they release a single helium balloon from the grave site and watch it float out of sight.

Brian Harman doesn't go as often.

"It's hard for me to go by there," he said.

Desirae Harman recently visited her sister's grave at Big Island Baptist Church in Bedford County. Harman continues to baby-sit Destiny and Madison on most days. She keeps two bookmarks -- one with Chance's picture, one with her sister's -- inside her Bible.

There are days when the house feels so empty. Days when the pictures of Chance that still occupy shelves and walls in the Harmans' home are painful reminders.

But the healing process has begun.

Brian Harman has returned to coaching. Before every game, he discreetly draws Chance's initials on the court with his foot. Every day or two, he shaves his head, a ritual that began when Chance lost his hair during treatments.

On Saturday at Floyd County High School, eight Timesland basketball teams will compete in the first Chance Harman Classic. Proceeds will go to the American Cancer Society and toward a scholarship for a Floyd County student.

Brian Harman has told Chance's story in several churches. Both Christians, Brian and Desirae Harman say the past year has drawn them closer to God, not caused them to question their faith.

"People could get angry about what happened to my sister, and you could have all these emotions, but I'm not angry at anything," Desirae Harman said. "Nothing is going to rob me of my salvation so I can see my son again."

The Harmans find strength in knowing they took Chance to outstanding doctors and spent almost every minute of his last seven months by his side.

They find comfort in a closer-than-ever bond with Travis and Laura Cantrell.

They still have Destiny.

And they find peace in their belief that Chance is in heaven.

Peace.

Heaven.

"I can't wait to see him again," Brian Harman said. "It seems so long since we've seen him now. It seems like forever."