You’re missed :(

‘Darling girl… You’re Missed.’

“Thank you for explaining that my eye cancer isn’t going to make me deaf. I feel so fortunate that an intellectual giant like yourself would deign to operate on me.” 

― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

I had an unstoppable itch to write… I am reading the Fault in our Stars by John Green. I am not going to share the synopsis, what I liked and what I hated. By no way am I a reviewer. I am a reader through and through and this is not a book review, beware.

 

I loved the way Hazel is portrayed on the book. She made me laugh. She made me cry. She made me happy and definitely, made me sad. She is fictional, but I had known one such girl, just like Hazel, just like Isaac, who had fought the vicious hands of cancer. Like a survivor. And just like Gus, who fought hard and failed.

 

This is in memory of that girl… who had died before she could see so much of the world. But, I hope she is in a better place, now…

 

She was a beautiful girl. Inside and the out. Her eyes were a mysterious brown, which always twinkled with happiness. She had an unquenchable need to learn new things and she mingled with people easily.

 

She called me ‘Sister’ with so much love. I had known her shortly in my life, but she made an effect. I liked her like my own sister.

Her story start like this…

 

She wanted to learn Islam and walked into our hometown with so much dreams. She had waved goodbye to her family with tears and with their blessings, walked in to our home, our life. She had stayed in the hostel, and at times, when she got holidays, she’d visit my aunt’s house. That was when I first met her. I was definitely shy and not easy to talk to, especially to strangers. But she instantly found me, talked with me and made me comfortable. She was much younger than me and I began to see her as a little sister. Whenever she came to visit my aunt’s house, I visited her. We became good as sisters.

 

After some months, she had severe stomach pains and they had claimed it was gastric trouble. By God, they were wrong. By the time they had checked with the specialists, her leukemia had grown worst. She got the treatment. She was put through painkillers and radiation. She was injected with IVs… All those cancer-ic merits. 😦

 

That wasn’t the reason I remembered her so dearly, though. She continued her life, like it was no big deal. She had called me during her tenth grade exams and asked me to pray for her. Amidst hospitals, daily treatments and pain, she had learned all the lessons privately and wrote her exams. She passed. That day was like a festive occasion. I cheered for her in my heart.

 

When my cousin’s marriage happened, she visited with her usual smile. She was pale, with dark purple shadows underneath her eyes and had lost her hair, but she sat with us, talked, smiled, cheered, while all the while I felt too bad in the inside. While, all the while I complained for silly things, she smiled and ploughed through life, head on. That bright, lovely girl…

 

And when her blood become too dirtied with Cancer cells, and when the treatment started to become ‘Prolonging-death’ instead of ‘saving from death’, she had boldly took her life for as it was and did something admirable.

 

She had asked – pleaded – her parents not to spend any more on her. She had asked them to give up. She had promised that she’d die happily, if they just let her go. And that girl was 15 when she did so. Not that her parents listened to her, but that bold step towards accepting her fate, her life had raised her a step in the pedestal’s of my heart – so did in all the others who knew her. When my mother told me this, it was too hard not to cry.

 

She showed signs of progress at some point. Then the cancer relapsed. This routine had become usual. For some days, there’d be a phone call announcing her progress. Then, there’d be the sad news. Amidst all this, the girl stayed brave. Brave as a warrior.

 

During my marriage, she called me and said sorry, because she couldn’t come. She said that she so badly wanted to see me getting married and said she’s sorry she couldn’t come. I choked on my own words. I had nothing left to say. I felt worthless, too stupid to talk to that young girl. I said ‘Okay.’ Too stupid to say, but too suffocated to talk anything else, I said Okay.

 

A few months later, her death came through the loud ringing of the telephone. Incessant.

 

I cried and cried. I cried some more. I felt too lost to talk and that day, I hid inside the room and cried.

 

Her beautiful face flashed in front of my eyes. I imagined her eyes closed and smiling.

 

Gone… She was gone, before she had seen her life fully. She was 16 or so, when she died, vanished into the air like an endless mist. Gone, far away into the eternity.

 

Thinking about her made me sad, but sometimes, she made me smile when I think about her endless enthusiasm. Her beauty. Her cheerful nature. Her courage. May she find peace in the other life. If Allah wishes, she will.

 

Darling girl…. You’re missed 😦

 

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