Cancer Killed Somebody I Haven’t Spoken to In Twenty Years, and It Crushed Me

Long, long ago, in what certainly seems like a galaxy far, far away, I knew a young woman named Jessica. We went to high school together for a couple of years, and our paths crossed more than a handful of times. Jessica was, if I remember correctly, the Field Commander for the Dublin Coffman Marching Band, a small, quiet girl whose presence nevertheless contained immense gravitas. She was so well respected by the school faculty that they often didn’t hire a substitute teacher when the band director was absent—they trusted that Jessica would be responsible for conducting the day’s concert band rehearsal, which she did magnificently. She was the type of girl that never had a bad word for anybody, and nobody could ever have had a bad word for her. She had an innate radiance about her, with a smile that was permanently affixed to her petite face.

I, on the other hand, was a marginally decent athlete who didn’t want anybody to know that I was even part of the school’s music program, lest they think I was some sort of nerd. I barely spoke to most of the kids who were my concert band classmates—I somehow thought that the fact that I possessed a couple of varsity letters made me socially superior to them. Some of them, understandably, didn’t take kindly to my attitude.

Jessica wasn’t one of them. She treated me just as nicely as she did anybody else. She was a year older than I was, and when she graduated from high school, I was pleasantly surprised to be invited to her graduation party. Just coincidentally, I happened to have one of my friends from the football team with me that day who was an All-American tailback, and he tagged along. You have to understand that in my school, the athletes and the band kids didn’t intermingle. Like, at all. The band kids at her party were somewhat shocked that I had even been invited, and they were more shocked that I brought the most popular kid in the whole school with me. But after we left the party, my football-playing friend said to me, “Man. She was so nice. Everybody there was so nice. I hope I never made fun of any of those kids.” She always left that kind of impression on people.

As tends to happen after school days end, I didn’t stay in touch with her. I don’t think we were ever even Facebook friends. However, about a year ago, I started seeing some Facebook posts from mutual friends about “Team Jessica.” I clicked on them and was horrified to find out that Jessica had been diagnosed with an advanced form of Ewing’s Sarcoma in July of 2014. I followed along passively, clicking on posts that my friends shared, cheering her on through chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Already impossibly tiny for a grown woman, the cancer and the treatments combined to make her waifish.

But I went on with my life. After all, we all have our struggles, right? I foolishly assumed that I’d have a chance to reach out to her at some point, to wish her well, to send her some sort of inspirational message about how she would undoubtedly kick Cancer’s ass. Other things happened. Life got in the way. I never sent her any message at all.

Then, a little over a week ago, I saw a post from her that stated her doctors had decided to stop traditional means of therapy, and that her cancer had been deemed terminal. Even with this horrific, fatal news, Jessica posted a picture of herself smiling in her hospital garb, laughing because even a “Small” shirt and pants looked huge on her fragile frame. I still said nothing to her. Why would she care to read anything from somebody she hadn’t seen in twenty years, when she had such unbelievably heavy news weighing on her?

Then, today, the post came from her family. Jessica had passed away last night, succumbing to her inevitable fate at the age of thirty-eight. The post read as follows:

It is with a heavy heart that we must let all of you faithful followers know that Jessica lost her valiant battle against cancer this evening. Everything happened very fast over the past week. She passed away peacefully at The James, surrounded by her family. Please know that your support over the past 18 months meant the world to her. She is at peace and dancing in heaven.

I forgot. I forgot that not everybody survives. I forgot that in this world of happy pink ribbons and 5K run/walks and football players wearing pink socks that this sinister disease still takes people from us at the height of their lives. It takes people my age, like Jessica, and much, much younger. It kills without conscience or reason. It just kills.

I assumed I’d have all the time in the world to tell her that her kindness had meant something to me over twenty years ago. I was wrong.

So, with all the respect in the world to her family who wrote the words above, who must be grieving tremendously, and as an outsider who couldn’t even be bothered to send a word of encouragement, I say this: Jessica didn’t lose her battle, any more than any of us who will ultimately end up six feet below ground will. She won because she fought. She won because her spirit never faltered. In the face of certain death, Jessica smiled.

Who among us will be able to say the same?