In fifth grade, our class watched an enchanting little Pennies-for-Patients television special called “Why, Charlie Brown, Why?” The twenty-minute animation featured a young leukemia patient, a classmate of Charlie Brown’s never mentioned before and never to be mentioned again. Despite the happy ending, it was an oddly hollow affair. All of us were too old to ignore the concept of death, but too young to feel the threat of mortality.
After the film, we all walked in line to the library. “I hope I never have to lose my hair, because my eyebrows are so bushy,” Ali giggled as we leaned against the wall. I was about to remind her that eyebrows are also hair and would not be any more resistant to chemotherapy than a blade of grass would be to an industrial-strength herbicide.
I decided to take the self-deprecation route instead. “No, you would look fine. Mine are way worse.” We bickered in the hall for a bit over whose objective prettiness would surmount the hypothetical wrath of autoimmune collapse.
If only we knew foreshadowing when we heard it.
***
Seven years and one diagnosis later, the community organized a day to support her recovery. The color for brain cancer is grey, presumably a pun on “grey matter.” Not in the mood for such morbidity, we instead planned to decorate the school in green, her favorite color, until her brother informed us that her favorite color was actually pink. The slogan devised for this event was “Think Pink for Ali Mink,” a delightful rhyming cadence that would have sounded fictional if I hadn’t been living through it.
Flyers were posted. Bracelets were made. Sweatshirts were sold. A date was set: November 8th. She died on November 7th.
***
That evening, I refreshed Facebook. The first update fed to me by an heartless algorithm was from an old Girl Scout friend, I think. The message spoke of a brave girl gone too soon, and concluded by asking Ali to rest in peace.
I refreshed again. There were exponentially more. I refreshed again, as friends of friends found out and followed suit. I refreshed again, dendritic branches, six degrees separated, unfurled across the screen. I read every one. But I didn’t write my own, yet.
***
I suppose I always assumed she’d come back. There was an empty desk reserved for Mink in physics honors, right between Mangili and O’Hara. And yet, she had been out sick for the entire semester. The last time I saw her must have been June. Back then, November 8th was far away, and the future looked flush with the hopeful. Now that I drew closer, I saw that the pockets of cautious optimism had been just impressionistic dots imitating solid color. I didn’t realize I was saying goodbye.
No one taught class that November 8th. The autumn concert was cancelled. There was a lot of hugging and a lot of regretting. I don’t remember much else.
I watched freshmen who hadn’t known her cry in the halls and felt the conspicuous dryness of my own face. I thought, I must be more entitled than them to miss her, I have more of a right, but I wasn’t using it, so I let them have it.
***
The wake was held three days later, on Veteran’s Day. I wore the stiff blue-gold marching band shirt from the parade, as requested by her family, with a little pink A pinned to the front. My own rosier scarlet letter, A for artifice, absence of anguish. Not there as a friend, just another member of the band.
The line to enter the funeral home weaved around the parking lot and along the side of the road. We waited, with nothing to do but watch other people wait. As we were finally about to step over the threshold of the funeral home, my mom asked “Are you ready for this?” It had never occurred to me that I wasn’t. It never occurred to me that I might be emotionally unprepared to face a room of flower vases and picture frames and one long, wooden box.
***
I wasn’t sure I missed her, but I had a large enough vocabulary to pretend. I wrote prose and poetry about her, proclaiming that she’ll always be watching over me as an angel and that this good green earth will never forget her beautiful legacy of courage and grace. And that she was “taken too soon,” but by whom or what was left ambiguous, and how long it would have been before “soon” had elapsed was a mystery.
I said prayers I didn’t believe. I expressed emotions I didn’t feel. What other people called “grief” and “loss,” I only felt guilty about not feeling worse. Preoccupied by my own nothing.
***
Twenty days later, I was in the hospital. Though the surgical procedure had been scheduled months in advance, I was scared. Just as Ali must have been.
The anesthesia mask was placed over my nose and mouth by a gloved hand. My breathing slowed. My limbs fell asleep, I couldn’t perceive when they went numb. Feeling floating. Above room, above earth, pas d’énergie
The gloved hand readjusted the mask. I remembered what cold, sterilized air felt like. Ecstatic with illicit ventilation I was back, paralyzy puppet arms, laced/up like sneak;er by shoestring IV bow.knot tubes
I got another tiny jolt of pure air. My eyes shot open and I was in my numb body one more time before the concern of dropping eyelids eyelids eyelids. Still blackness zero’ nothing somehow quelque-chose spiraling in befractaled rotations/i missed her i did) i want to SLEEP.
wh[at-did-she feel when (she) lef,t this place
Before I could cry, I was unconscious.