Cancer
I never really understood the doctor completely when he told my single mother I had cancer. I would always play with the other neighborhood children. It was a warm Friday afternoon in March, while playing, I got asked why my hair was falling out. That night I went home to my mother with that question. My mother said
“Olivia you know how you go for chemo and they give you that pill,” she waits “that pill makes your hair fall out.”
“Will I go bald?”
“I’m sorry babygirl but yes, yes you will.”
I cried that night because I loved my beautiful long hair. I slept next to my mother that night, she she cried with me. I wasn’t sure why. I just thought it was for my hair, but instead she cried for her only little girl she’d lose. I was only five, very slender, and beautiful as my mother would say. I asked why I had to take the medicine.
“Because you have to, it will make you feel better”
“Mamma will you still love me when my hair is gone?”
“Of course I will, I will never stop loving you.”
That month we went back for a check up twelve times. My mother cried every time. I was going to be six in seven months. Doctor Shaw pulled my mother from the room. A few moments later they came back together, Doctor Shaw having to hold my mother up.
“Baby?” my mother asked once she calmed down “Do you think you can be strong for Mamma?”
“Yes”
“Babygirl, Doctor Shaw said you have until next March to live,” Mamma then started to cry again ‘Mommy loves you, okay?”
I never shed one tear because I still didn’t understand completely.
December 29: I now lay in my hospital bed awaiting death my mother has red puffy eyes as she watched me. She cried till she had no tears left. I have on an oxygen mask to help me breath, I won’t make it to March. I will die cold and unknowing. I turned six, five days ago. I hear a loud and long beep as I took my last breath. Looking to my mother as she found some way to cry. Doctors rush in, but I was gone.
