Bryant was my first goodbye. It stung for quite a while. I haven't spoke a word to him since that day but my friends from school tell me a week after we ended he had another girl on his arm and in the past I might have felt it in my heart to hold a grudge but oddly enough I'm happy that he found someone he could be with and still "move on with life."
Shortly after I contracted an infection that sent me back to the hospital. I hated the feeling of being so vulnerable. But I got over the infection and healed physically as I got over the heartbreak.
Not to long after, in February my best friend Destiny Newberry became my second goodbye for the year. It seemed that all but my family were disappearing. Destiny's mother, whom I refer to as my second mother, came out of a three year remission from breast cancer. The whole Newberry family was headed off to a Florida treatment facility.
The number of ways cancer has affected my life are impossible to count. For and good and mostly bad it has become part of my character. In fact cancer was the reason for our friendship. I met Destiny at a benefit dinner for her mom. Being so young neither of us understood exactly why my parents bought an expensive dinner in a hall filled with people or why her mom didn't feel good anymore. It was just an opportunity to make friends.
We sat at the tables and colored while people slowly started to leave and the cleanup started. I left the hall that night with a playdate and a new friend. To see how cancer pulled us together and was now pulling us apart was an eye opener to how life goes. That is: unplanned, unfair, and unprecedented.
So we hugged and cried the night before they took the two and a half hour flight from Cedarville, Michigan to Jacksonville, Florida. Before she left she turned to me and said, "Next time we're together cancer will just be in the past. I gonna miss you Dell." I smiled, "I'm gonna miss you too Destiny. It's a good thing your mom's a fast fighter you won't be gone long." We hugged and said goodbye. She left me with a photo book filled with all the years of friendship, a wet, tear stained shirt, and our memories.
I now know that the Newberry's would return the week after I was left to hospice care.
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12 Last Words
Художественная прозаDella Rosser, a sarcastic and emotional teen is diagnosed with lung cancer in January of her senior year in high school. In the next twelve months cancer wreaks havoc on her body and her life. Her story is one of hope, sadness, love, happiness, and...
