Cheyenne Teen’s Fight For Life Against Brain Cancer Inspires A Symphony

Adelaide Bomberger, an 18-year-old from Cheyenne, was in the audience at the University of Wyoming on Nov. 10 to hear her song, “Beyond Your Years,” played for the first time by the UW symphonic band. 

As the music engulfed the audience, she sat enthralled.

The harmony rose and fell. Rich saxophones gave way to the high notes of the clarinet. Horns, bells and trumpets mixed to create a swell of emotions that filled the auditorium.  

“Oh my gosh, it was so awesome,” she said afterward, still delighted from the moment. “I was just sitting there thinking, ‘Dang, they wrote a song about me. I'm like an actual legend now.’”

The music the band played was an interpretation of Bomberger’s story “Four Words That Saved Me.” 

The teenager wrote and illustrated the short book about her battle with brain cancer and all the emotions she went through as she grappled with her faith. These emotions range from anger to sorrow to acceptance to hope, and were all conveyed through the music. 

“It was really special,” Matthew Schlomer said about the evening. 

As the University of Wyoming director of bands, he not only guided the ensemble through the musical arrangement, but helped bring the whole piece alive during the creative process with the university as a sponsor. 

“Language is a device to express something that is an idea and a feeling,” he said. “Music gives us a chance to deal with something that's a little bit more abstract and for feelings that we don't have words yet.”

The Gift Of Song

This is the first time the nonprofit organization Sing Me A Story worked with a Wyoming child. Earlier this year, it had reached out to the Wyoming Make-A-Wish Foundation, which nominated Adelaide for the program. 

Her finished story was given to Maddy Stephenson, a composer based in Los Angeles who, along with Schlomer, interpreted it into music. 

“I read each section based on the emotions that Adelaide was feeling,” Stephenson said about turning the story into a song. “I tried to draw upon my own experiences, and it was very emotional for me.”

“We serve kids of all different ages and, and children that are facing all different types of adversity,” Autumn  Dobbeck, the director of operations for Sing Me A Song told Cowboy State Daily. “It is so meaningful to be able to sit down with them and give them the opportunity to just really share their heart and their imaginations which is the one thing they all have regardless of what they're facing.” 

For Adelaide, that hardship she was facing with music is cancer.

The Cancer Battle

At 15, Adelaide was diagnosed with a rare cancer in her brain. 

She began treatment right away, which included a year of radiation and chemotherapy, though the tumor reappeared just six months later. This past summer, and now 18, Adelaide completed another round of chemotherapy.

“I was having headaches,” she said. “Really bad headaches every single day. I was throwing up a lot from all of the pressure that was building up in my brain because my tumor was blocking one of the ventricles that allowed for my cerebrospinal fluid to flow in and out.”

So began the young woman’s battle with cancer again.

“We actually ended up going down to the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, and we were there the whole summer doing radiation treatments,” said her mom, Earlynn Bomberger. “We came back, and she had a short break, and then we started chemo again, and she just finished what we hope will be the last chemo ever.”

As a result of the tumor, Adelaide ended up losing part of her vision and the ability to see colors.

“She only sees black and white grayscale,” Earlynnn said. “It took her writing and her ability to draw back to a kindergarten level.”

This didn’t hold back Adelaide from illustrating her own book for the Sing Me A Song program. She loves to draw and was excited to express herself in this unique way.

“We are giving them a chance to just be a kid and really share with me what they want to share,” Dobbeck said. “I feel like these kids have an even bigger impact on me and how I view the world, just because I see what they're facing and able to go through and be resilient. They always inspire me no matter what their stories are about.”

Adelaide’s Song

The first step in creating Adelaide’s song was crafting the story.

“I could tell that Adelaide was is a very thoughtful person,” Dobbeck said. “She was sweet and a little bit shy at first. She really wanted to write about her cancer journey and her faith is obviously very important to her. 

“When she came back with the first draft of her story, and I read through it, I just thought it was genuine. That was her experience, and I liked that she included the hopeful aspect to it. I was excited to see how it would turn into a song because there were a lot of aspects that were powerful in her story.”

Both band director Schlomer and composer Stephenson felt that same raw emotion emanating from the story, and they wanted to make sure they captured that feeling in Adelaide’s song. 

“Maddy and I met to look at the book and find universal themes that would really apply to us all,” Schlomer said. “We were both struck that since Adelaide was an older kid when cancer came, that there were a lot of coming-of-age motifs in her book.” 

“It kind of starts where she's kind of figuring out her teenage years,” Stephenson added. “There's a lot of things that happen to her and she deals with grief. After first dealing with a painful loss, she finds out that she has this horrible illness. 

“The rest of the story deals with Adelaide processing her new reality and having an epiphany that she can change her mindset about it through her faith.”

After discussing the story and Adelaide’s intentions behind it,  Schlomer and Stephenson felt that it would best be handled as an abstract piece of music.  

“I was really moved by it, and we decided to handle it in terms of the emotions that she was feeling,” Stephenson said. “I started writing the piece and it ended up being kind of a journey from anger to confusion to loss and grief and then finally to kind of hopefulness and faithfulness and kind of that epiphany moment and ending in a more positive way.” 

It was Schlomer who suggested the song’s title “Beyond Her Years” as a natural fit for both the song and the girl it represents. 

“With this project, Adelaide's courage and her story lives beyond her years,” Schlomer said. “It’s also a double entendre because she's dealing with issues that are beyond her years as well.”

The UW Symphonic Band

“Beyond Her Years” was played for the first time Nov. 10 by the University of Wyoming symphonic band, and the college students were excited that Adelaide would be there.

“When Adelaide decided she's going to come to the concert, we were thrilled,”  Schlomer said. “Some of the students immediately went up and talked to her. A number of the students have family who've dealt with cancer as well at very young ages so they could relate to her. 

“It's a beautiful way for us to deal with the different things that attacked us all.”

Adelaide was delighted by the reception her story and song received at the concert.

“The thing that I really enjoyed seeing was that after the first rehearsal and then after the concert, there were actually so many people that were in the audience,” Adelaide said. 

Her mom agreed.

“There were people that we didn't even know that said Adelaide’s story and song resonated with them and touched their hearts,” Earlynn said. “Just having this opportunity with her story was phenomenal. It's hard going through something that is so dramatically life changing and then to get to have these amazing experiences that just remind you about how wonderful life is.”

Those that participated in the Sing Me A Song project said it was much more than just creating a song, it was about making connections through music. 

“When people go through things like this, because of just how intense it is, they almost get removed from our community and we lose track of them,” Schlomer said. “It's really meaningful to have them know that the community is still behind them as they go through these difficult times.”

Adelaide wants her story and song, now available online, to be an inspiration and blessing to others. During her three years of fighting brain cancer, she has also successfully graduated high school. She is now in college, studying computer science. 

“It’s important that you just trust in God that there will be a brighter future ahead of you,” Adelaide said. “Know that you can't give up even if you really feel like it. If you give up on life, there will be so many people that miss you.”

By being on this journey battling cancer and facing her own personal fears, Adelaide said that she has realized something about herself that she didn’t know before.

Also, “You realize how kick-butt you are!”  

Contact Jackie Doroty at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com

Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.