George H. W. Bush, Barbara Bush and the agonizing loss of his daughter Robin at the age of 3

In a letter written to his mother in the late 1950s, George HW Bush indicated that he was missing something at his home.

At the time, Bush and his wife Barbara were the parents of four rowdy young boys – George W., Jeb, Marvin and Neal – whom they loved very much. But, he wrote, he still wanted something.

Something he once possessed.

"The vivid, throbbing excitement of the four boys struggling to learn and grow – needs a counterpart," he writes. "We need crisp, starched dresses to accompany all of our jeans and torn helmets to our knees. We need soft blonde hair to compensate for these crew cuts. We need a dollhouse to stand up to our forts, our snowshoes and our thousands of baseball cards. "

He continued," We need a girl. "

For a few years, Pauline Robinson" Robin "Bush was this girl. Formerly expressive and dynamic, like her brothers, the young Robin began in 1953 to complain about being tired. Barbara took her to a pediatrician.

The doctor called a few days later with devastating news: Robin was very sick. She had leukemia – a word the Bushs had never heard before – and the prognosis was bleak: the 3-year-old girl would not survive.

"Her advice was to tell no one, go home, forget that Robin was sick, make her as comfortable as possible, love her and let her slip gently," wrote Barbara Bush in her 1994 memoir. "She said it would happen very soon."

Instead, the Bush started a fight for several months to keep their daughter alive.

The day after the announcement of the bad news, the Bushs flew with Robin home to Midland. , Texas, New York, moves into George HW's apartment Bush's grandparents in the east end of Manhattan. His uncle was a doctor at Sloan Kettering, a leading cancer center, even though the cancer was barely understood and considered taboo.

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Robin stayed in the hospital for seven months, regularly undergoing bone marrow tests and blood transfusions. Susan Page, a USA Today journalist who writes a biography of Barbara Bush to appear next year, writes that Barbara had a rule: do not cry in Robin's room.

This rule was that of George H.W. Bush – who was sentimental and carried his emotions regularly on the sleeve – was almost impossible to meet.

He would tell Robin that he had to go to the bathroom when he felt the tears flow, reports Page. But he would actually enter the hallway to gather. Seeing his sick daughter, which he would describe in the letter to his mother as a "legitimate Christmas angel," was sometimes scary.

"We used to laugh and ask ourselves if Robin thought he had the weakest bladder in the world," Barbara Bush said later, according to Page. "Not true, he just had the softest heart."

A drawing of Marshall Ramsey of Mississippi Clarion Ledger representing George, Barbara and Robin Bush in Paradise. (Marshall Ramsey)

Barbara's written page collapsed when Robin breathed her last breath and it was her husband who helped her to regain her composure.

Later, Barbara would marvel that a tragedy that divided many couples had brought them closer together.

"Over and over again, over the next six months, did she says, George would put me together again. "