Notes Left Behind is a 2009 non-fiction book by Keith and Brooke Desserich, the parents of a six-year-old girl named Elena who died of cancer.

Elena Desserich, from the Cincinnati suburb of Wyoming, Ohio, United States, was diagnosed with an inoperable form of brain cancer called Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG) in 2006 and her parents were told she had just 135 days to live.

Shortly after, her parents and younger sister, Grace Desserich, began finding notes all over the house.

[3] Elena, who turned 6 in the nine months between her diagnosis and her death, died in August 2007 and her parents published the book in November 2009.

[1] Her parents said that they found the first of the notes several days after Elena's death, but "then they kept on showing up everywhere and now we have three large boxes full of them".