The garbage bag was enormous.

Not the kind that fits beneath a kitchen sink. This was the industrial-sized version, stuffed so completely with Christmas presents that Laura Welp could hardly believe what she was seeing.

Her six-year-old daughter Emma was receiving treatment for an inoperable brain tumor at a St. Jude clinic in Peoria. One day after Emma was settled in for an appointment, staff members asked Laura to walk outside with them. They had something for her.

Inside that enormous black bag were Christmas presents, not only for Emma, but for her twin sister, Abby.

"We don't even gift our girls this much stuff," Laura remembered thinking.

Then she understood why. St. Jude didn't want parents caring for seriously ill children to worry about Christmas shopping, about when they could leave the hospital, about how to safely enter crowded stores during COVID, about how Christmas would happen while everything else in their lives had been turned upside down.

So someone else had worried about it for them. Laura never forgot that.

Today, that bag of toys has become three vehicles packed to the brim. Laura isn't kidding when she says a U-Haul may be next.

It is called the Embracing Emma St. Jude Toy Drive. And it began with a little girl who was, in her mother's words, extraordinarily kind.

Emma and Abby were six when their lives changed on an October Sunday in 2021. Emma complained of a headache and lay down beside her father. When she became lethargic, her parents rushed her to the emergency room. Doctors discovered a brain bleed. Surgery to remove the resulting blood clot revealed something far worse: an inoperable tumor called DIPG.

Laura and her husband suddenly faced the unimaginable. They chose to protect as much of childhood as they could.

"We wanted to keep things as normal as possible for her and her sister Abby," Laura said.

There were treatments at St. Jude. There was a Disney World trip after Emma received a Make-A-Wish though but, because of COVID, Make-A-Wish was not allowing travel through their company, so Laura took her family of six on their own. Ultimately, Emma’s Make-A-Wish was a personal shopper at American Girl in Chicago, a visit to Willis Tower and to Shedd Aquarium. Then there were crafts with Allison, a child life specialist whom Emma trusted through chemotherapy and the frightening parts of treatment.

And surrounding the Welp family was a community. Laura has taught at Tri-Valley for 20 years. Although she lives in Normal, she discovered during those seven months that the people here were more than coworkers and families whose children had passed through her classroom.

They brought meals. They gave money. They helped. They loved.

"Everything just came to a full-on family," Laura said.

Emma died May 23, 2022. She was six years old.

"Forever six," her mother says.

That first Christmas without her, Laura knew the family needed to do something in Emma's name. She didn't know whether people would respond or whether the idea would continue beyond a single year. She remembered the bag.

Laura wrote a short script. Abby recorded a video while holding the last photograph taken of the twins with Santa. The family asked people to donate toys that could be given to St. Jude families just as toys had once been given to them.

People responded. Then they kept responding.

Six years later, the Embracing Emma St. Jude Toy Drive has grown into a community tradition. Toys arrive at school. People bring them to the Welp home. Others order through Amazon. Tri-Valley students and families participate, along with people who have followed Emma's story through the family's Embracing Emma page. Every toy goes to St. Jude.

The connection remains personal. Allison, Emma's child life specialist, still helps Laura understand what patients and families need. The Welps deliver toys twice each year, including around June 7, the twins' birthday. For Abby's birthday, the family collects toys in lieu of gifts.

Abby is 12 now. Laura describes her as "the biggest ray of sunshine I've ever seen." A few years ago, Abby told her parents that when Emma died, she got the best parts of her twin sister.

Laura believes she did.

Emma was the child who noticed when someone else didn't have something and offered hers. She played with everybody. She looked after Abby.

"She just really looked out for others," Laura said.

Laura sees that same instinct in Abby now, especially around children with special needs or anyone who might otherwise be left out.

"She wants to make sure others stand out or that others are treated well."

At home, Emma remains part of ordinary conversation. A cardinal appears beside the car. A butterfly passes. A song comes on.

"Good morning, Emma," Abby might say.

"We speak her name on a daily basis," Laura said.

That matters because grief has its own peculiar relationship with time.

"Everybody else's world just keeps going," Laura said. "That's a really hard concept with grief."

There are days she wishes she could pump the brakes, because every passing year puts more distance between the family and the little girl they desperately want the world to remember.

But every Christmas, something remarkable happens. The toys start arriving. One bag becomes dozens. One family's gratitude becomes another family's relief. Children who never knew Emma choose presents for children they will never meet.

And a community that once wrapped its arms around Laura, Abby, and their family helps them wrap those arms around someone else.

This year's Embracing Emma St. Jude Toy Drive will collect new toys at Tri-Valley Middle School from November 16 through 20.

Somewhere afterward, a mother or father caring for a sick child will be asked to walk out to the car. Someone will hand them a bag. Christmas will be one less thing to worry about.

And Emma will be there.