Fifteen Years

I walked into the elementary art room just a few hours after they had it on lockdown. The blue carpet was stained pink from where you threw up. You’d had a seizure, they told me. Another one. The stench of the powder they put over your cleaned up vomit still lingering in the air, but you were gone.

I went home, so scared for you, and your mother met me in the alley. She told me I could go in and see you, even though you were asleep on the couch. When she found me, I was standing in the dining room, too afraid to step into the next room where you lay under an afghan… I was praying, begging God to make you better. I needed my best friend. I turned and looked at your mom and finally allowed the words that were echoing in my head to fall from my mouth.

“Will he live,” I asked as tears stung my eyes. I couldn’t imagine losing you. She told me you would, and I was relieved… but a few years later, I lost you to epilepsy after all.

You’d had another seizure, this one leaving you brain dead; you died a few days later. I was angry. Angry at God for taking you from me. Angry at epilepsy for causing the seizures. The students at school were allowed to go to the library to speak with grief counselors, so that’s where I spent my whole day… but the others were only there because they were sorry that they had always made fun of you. You were different, and that’s what made you so special to me… but to them, it was a game—a reason to make fun of and mock you. I became angry at the others surrounding me at the table for treating you so terribly while you were alive, but only feeling remorse once it was too late to take back their words. I cried so hard I couldn’t breathe. I still can’t breathe when I think about it.

Across the hall from the library was my mom’s classroom. I found her there with the lights off in her free period. I wanted to disappear from everyone, leave the cruelness that I was engulfed in. She picked up her box of paper to be recycled and handed it to me. She told me to crumple pieces up and throw them as hard as I could at the wall until I felt better. I made the wall my target, along with the desks. The chalk board. The floor. It helped, but it couldn’t fix the gaping hole in my heart that was left by you leaving.

Your funeral was something I think you would have been proud of. The church sanctuary was full, spilling over into the annex, down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk. People to celebrate your life, and others to repent for their cruelty. I’d never seen more people show support for you in the almost 10 years I had known you. I was devastated, but I was proud.

Ten years later, I was diagnosed with epilepsy myself. It hit my family hard, but I was able to accept it because I’d been through it once with you. You may be gone, but you’ve served as my inspiration for waking up every day and fighting the fight that you just simply couldn’t fight anymore. I often think about you, and who and what you’d have become if you were given the opportunity to grow up and become an adult. What you’d have done if your life hadn’t been cut so short.

Today makes fifteen years since we lost you. Fifteen long years, but it seems just like yesterday. I still think about you daily, and how inspiring you and your life are to me. I hope I make you as proud as you always made me. Every day of the past fifteen years, and every day until I’m gone from this place, too.

I love you. I miss you so much.