It was 2 years ago today a fifteen year old girl passed away due to a brain tumor. That girl was my friend Elizabeth. I can remember feeling horrible that day. Mutual friends were an hour away. The urgent phone calls from friends of the reports of her death. The sense of not knowing what exactly to say to her peers to bring on a feeling of comfort. The true sense that the long struggle was all over and the grieving period had begun. We were all looking for answers from each other. And we didn’t have good enough answers. Doctors gave her 5 months to live. And initially I didn’t believe them. As if I had heard reports of the same thing happening and then the patient living for years after wards. This was real. Believe it. Believe it when the doctor gives grim hope.
I can remember wondering and asking myself and God “Why?” Why did this thing have to happen this way? I can’t explain it away. I can only surmise that it happened for a purpose. Whether it was to make others stop and take a spiritual inventory of their lives. Or for us to know that cancer and brain tumors are very horrible things. I don’t know. That’s the bottom line. I don’t know.
Elizabeth was buried on September 10th. We were all hoping for things to get back to normal the next day. They didn’t. It was almost as if the whole world came crashing down on our little lives.