I DO not know Mio Mendiola, the five-year-old boy afflicted with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL). But I was choked with emotion after reading the article written by his mother, Jasmine, in a national daily two weeks ago. I could not help myself from crying in my office cubicle as I went through his mother's piece. My heart broke as I visited Mio's website, www.miofightscancer.com, where his mother narrated details Mio's journey as he battles his illness.

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The website background alone will send anybody to tears -- a mother cuddling her little boy as he kisses his mother. Like Mio, my son's beautiful with thick eyelashes that are among the longest in the whole wide world, as his mother proudly describes it. It is even more heart wrenching for Mio's mother to see him.

A happy picture with no trace of the serious ailment that little Mio is suffering from. I did not bother to finish reading the narration of his fight because it was just too heavy to bear.

The process that this little angel goes through would really break any mother's heart. I have a son who is two years older than Mio. When my son gets sick with fever or even just a slight cough and colds, I am desolate. I would rather be the one getting sick than seeing my son having difficulty breathing or feeling ill. As parents, we can feel their pain because they are not the usual bubbly and makulit children they really are.

For our children, no fame and wealth can ever compensate for good health and safety. We would rather that they are ordinary people doing ordinary things than getting all of life's worldly things and be sickly.

Most of the time, our children find relief and solace in our arms, hugs and kisses and vice versa. Like them, we feel so much better doing these things for them. Mio, on the other hand, feels well when his mother kisses his arthritic foot to keep the pain away. Such habit, his mother confessed, has given Mio comfort. Fighting cancer, as Jasmine puts it, is worse than war because no evil or goodness prevails in pursuit of life.

But for us parents, how do we answer questions from our children that we, too, do not know the answers to. I can just imagine the pain and torture that Jasmine goes through every time Mio asks her when the enemies in his blood will go away. We can only dream for the answers. I know we cannot question God's plan for each one of us. We can only hope for the best as we go through life.

Nothing is as painful as seeing our children get sick, much more suffer from a killer disease such as cancer. The sympathy that Mio and his mother generate as they document their ordeal in facing the battle is overwhelming, too.

Why am I writing about them, especially about Mio? I am doing this small share by letting you know about this child's suffering as his mother reaches out for all the help she could get for her precious boy. I know there are a lot of other children who are suffering but making a great difference even just for one life is one big deal.

Jasmine wants to show her son that a lot of people truly support him as he goes for his treatment and encourage him to continue his fight for life-"he knows he's sick and yet he remains thankful to God in our evening prayer for the toys he receives, for the nurses and the medicines that will help his owie go away. I have yet to give him the world I promised him."

Yes, Mio as well as other sick children have an ongoing marathon with life but with faith and prayers, nothing is impossible: where there is life, there is always hope.