Goodbye friends. Goodbye family. Goodbye world. Goodbye life.


I’m dying. That’s the only way to explain it. I’ve been dying. Thank you cancer.


Deep inside, I know that this is my last trip to the hospital. Though I’ve been going to the hospital ever since I was diagnosed almost three years ago, this trip feels different.


When I was first diagnosed, I didn’t realize what it meant. For me, for my friends, for my family, or for my future. I was so naive then, and I am so different now.


I had just celebrated my twelfth birthday. I was in my first year of middle school, and so young and innocent. Not knowing my future pain and suffering.


I don’t remember quite why I was tested. But I remember my mom’s quiet demeanor. She was so scared. At the time, I didn’t know why. But I do now.


The car hits a bump, and I cry out in pain. I wasn’t always this susceptible to pain. It came as the cancer came deeper and deeper inside me.


You’re probably wonder why I’m this calm as I’m dying. Well, at this stage in the cancer, I feel different. Pain swirls within me, hiding everywhere inside. Places that I didn’t even know existed until the cancer took me over.


Though the foggy haze of my fevered mind, I vaguely feel a touch on my shoulder. I appreciate it, though I can’t tell whoever is trying to comfort me that. I don’t even recognize who is beside me. At this point, I don’t even know who I am.


My first trip to chemotherapy scared me. I didn’t know anything about it. I knew no one who had suffered through it. I knew nothing about what would happen. About the pain. Anything that I would have to find out before my death.


Death. Am I scared of it? I don’t know. It will be a release from the ever present pain. But what is it like to finally be gone from this world?


On the other hand, I’ll be forever gone. My friends need me to rely on, someone who cares and who will always listen to them. My little sister is entering middle school, and is about the age when I was first diagnosed. She always has relied on me to protect her, to teach her, and to help her. I’ve barely met my little brother. He isn’t even in kindergarten yet, and was a baby when the cancer took hold of me. I don’t even know who he truly is inside.


I feel my body being lifted, and moved. We must have reached the hospital. I almost wish that we hadn’t. That I could die peacefully at home. But I don’t want that to be yet another burden on my family. Dying in the home that they live in. That they will continue to live in. Even when I’m gone.


I don’t know what’s happening. Blurred images dance through to my eyes. Bright lights. Soft and hard figures. Metal instruments, glaring into my weak eyes. It’s fading.


My eyes work enough to tell what room I’m being into. The room that the cancer patients nicknamed. The Room of No Return. Where cancer children are brought to die.


I don’t look. I know what I would see. Limp bodies laying on beds, hooked up to countless machines. Waiting for the Angel of Death.


I can’t tell how fast the time passes. It could have been days, weeks, or only a few hours. Time seems different. All that I use to try to count the time through my moments of consciousness, is the beeping of the heart machines echoing throughout the room. And when another machine goes silent, marking out another death. As everyone will die in this place. As everyone was brought here to die.


I know when my time is almost here. My lungs feel heavy, and every breath aches. Everything seems more distant than ever. I can barely make out the beeping of my heart machine, which has been marking my heartbeats during my last few days here.


And slowly, the beeping stops.


Everything becomes clearer. I feel like myself. Not the girl with cancer. Like before I was diagnosed, when I was the cheerful child.


I seem to be floating somehow. I look below, and see my family and friends, crying around a body that looks just like me. My best friend looks shocked, no tears falling down her cheeks. Then she runs out, the tears cascading down.


My other friends break their gaze at the body, and run after her, leaving my family alone with me.


My dad, my brave dad, is crying. I’ve only seen him cry once, at a funeral. He didn’t cry when our dog died, or even when I began to fail. But he’s crying now.


My mom is sobbing in his arms, uncontrollably.


My little sister looks almost shocked. Silent tears are streaming down her face, her entire body shaking with the sadness.


My baby brother doesn’t understand that I am gone. He’s never really known me, but he loves me, and I love him. And now I won’t be there for him.


I want to go down, to say good bye, and to comfort them. But before I can try, I start going up, up, up into the light.