Gerthly, The Girl Who Could Have

       As she looks looked at the world, she sees saw everything it can could give her. As I look at the world, I see everything it can take from me.
       I don’t remember my first words to her or my last, but I remember the pain. I remember waking up on a Sunday morning and having my parents waiting to tell me the news. I remember the dullness in the world when she stopped coming to school. I remember a lot, but I don’t remember her voice or our conversations.
       She was outstandingly generous and kind, and everyone knew it, but no one really cared. To everyone else, she was a grain of sand on the beach, but to me she was my best friend. To her family, she hung the moon, but to the school, she was a series of grades on a piece of paper that were bringing their average up.
       Gerthly was always happy, and it brightened the world. She didn’t need attention or acceptance from other people; she was herself, and that was the perfect thing, but I didn’t realize it until I couldn’t experience it anymore.
       I saw her humanity, but I didn’t appreciate its importance until I noticed its absence in other people. I was young, and I wish that type of awareness was drilled into my head before I missed it.
       Gerthly left school at the beginning of second grade, and I remember thinking about how she’ll have to make up all of that grade. I was old enough to understand death, but too young to see it coming.
       When Gerthly started to miss school, I told my dad, and he got in contact with Gerthly’s mother. This part is kind of hazy, but I know she was in the hospital at this point with brain cancer. Somehow my school found out, and we made a paper chain link with little messages on it from the students. In my grade each student made a card addressed to her.
       A paper chain link and some cards is what the most genuine and considerate person I’ve ever met gets.
       While she was still in the hospital, I received a bracelet with blue and translucent beads on it along with my name. My dad told me Gerthly made it for me. While this young, beautiful girl was suffering with a terminal illness, she made a bracelet for me. Since she didn’t have a bead with an A on it for the A in “Krista,” she used a V and turned it upside down.
       When she got out of the hospital, her mother and my father set up a date on a Wednesday, so I could go see her.
       I was incredibly nervous and scared, and my dad warned me she would look a little different. I brought the letters the kids in my class made, and I was ready to give back to her the way she did for me.
       When I walked into her room, there was a large hospital bed against the wall with the door facing away from me. As I walked around the bed to sit in the chair at the foot of the bed, I saw the canisters leading into Gerthly filled with different things. There was a breathing tube in her mouth, and her head was wrapped in white gauze.
       I put the cards down on my lap as I waved and said hello.
       I feel like I was in a trance, because my dad had to tell me to start reading the cards to her. I’m not sure if she couldn’t read because of the surgery, or if this was an excuse to be with her, but I did. I read all the different colored cards to her with different messages from each person. Some were personal and mentioned things they missed about her. Others said they thought she was really nice and were going to miss her.
       Either way, she loved them all. That’s what her mother told me. Gerthly couldn’t smile or talk to me, so I never knew what she was thinking. During that Wednesday, I felt like a burden to her, but I kept reading and hoping she was happy. When her mother told me Gerthly loved that I came to see her, I became ecstatic.
       That was the first of many Wednesdays. I went to Gerthly’s house after school, and I read dozens of different things to her. Each time after the first, I paid more attention to her eyes, where she could express her emotion. She was happy, which made me joyful, as well.
       When I went to see my grandmother in a different state, she gave me little books she was collecting from cereal boxes. I remember being so elated and excited to see Gerthly and read her those stories.
       Time went by as I adjusted to a school life without her in it. I went to her house every Wednesday, but at some point she had to go back to the hospital. One Sunday, I woke up and walked out of the room to see my parents and sister crying at the kitchen table. They looked devastated, and I didn’t know why.
       I was old enough to understand death, but too young to see it coming.
       As I walked toward them, I was incredibly confused. My dad noticed I was walking over, and he picked me up and hugged me. While I was in his arms, he told me my best friend died.
       I was in shock, but I knew he was telling me the truth. It didn’t really set in a first, but I remember knowing I should be crying, so I did, but not like I did when I realized what that meant.
       It meant I wouldn’t get to read to her every Wednesday. It meant she was no longer there to show people what pure happiness and generosity was. It meant she wasn’t there to experience life and everything it had to offer. It meant the kindness she put into the world was no longer there, but inside other people.
       I would later receive a funeral pamphlet with Gerthly on the front. I read the whole thing, from front to back, and saw my name in the list of friends. I felt truly honored to not only be apart of her short life but to also know her.
       Despite the months I spent with her in her room with a breathing tube down her throat, I still picture her smiling face with her hair braided when I think of her. I see her smiling and laughing, then I feel the happiness she gave to me.
       It’s not about how the world took something from me; it’s about how the world took something from itself. The world won’t get to experience her kindness or her generosity. The world won’t get to see her laugh or watch how she changes people for the better. The world won’t get to feel the happiness she put into me and into other people.
       But the happiness will live on in the people who’ve had the chance to be a part of Gerthly’s life, and I am lucky enough to be one of those people.