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It all felt so… sudden.
When Constance didn’t show up to school the first day, she texted the choir groupchat saying that her head hurts abnormally, and Ocean even told her to still show up for practice. They had a very important thing coming up.
But then she didn’t come back to school again. And the next day, and the next. And once the news got out, they spread like wildfire.
Mischa didn’t understand many things in English, or about Canada. But he knew what “cancer” meant. And at the next choir gathering, he was the first to speak, while others looked at their own legs in shock, unable to lift their heads, if only to not show others the tear stains on their faces, the red eyes, the quivering lips.
He said that it must be ok. That Constance is a warrior. That people don’t die this young. And that they should visit her at the hospital in the city, and bring her gifts.
And they did. Noel would write poems for her, Ocean would come in every week and explain everything she missed in school, Penny would give her a new toy or stuffed animal all the time, to the point where she had too many to have all of them in her ward, Ricky somehow found a way to talk his parents into letting him regularly stay in the same hospital, and played games and watched movies with her all day.
Mischa didn’t have money, he didn’t have resources, he had nothing. But he had what he always had - rage and passion. So he found a job. He took late buses back and forth. He would run into public gardens and secretly pick flowers for her. He almost quit school.
For some reason, he didn’t know why, but he felt like there was nothing more important than this girl in the hospital bed. When they had to shave her hair, he bought her a wig. He would come in and read her favorite books to her and listen to her laugh as he messed up words. He looked at her, falling asleep, with all these machines beeping around her, and he let himself cry.
She hated when they cried. She told them it’s just for now. She won’t die, she’s just having a little trouble. She was so sure of it, as they watched her fade away, week by week.
It’s been almost two years, when the doctors told the Blackwoods there was no hope left. The Blackwoods in turn called everyone in the now graduated choir.
Mischa felt like he was stabbed into his stomach. Why her? Why not anyone, anyone, literally anyone else?
One night he was the only one watching her. She was now too weak to even speak as much as she used to. She was laying in bed looking at the ceiling.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Why?” he asked.
“I’m leaving soon. I’m sorry. I wanted to see you happy, all of you, but I made you so sad…”
He took her hands in his.
“But you did, you made us happy, Constance. You are one of the sweetest, kindest people we all know. Being around you is a gift, and that’s why we’re sad. It makes me sad. You will always be alive to us, always here, even if you leave.”
She smiled at him. Not long after her eyes closed, and she fell asleep, as Mischa sang her a Ukrainian lullaby. He texted her parents and left.
A few hours later, at 5:34am she was declared dead.
And as he stood there, at her funeral, looking at the picture her parents chose - where she was smiling, already sick, but still healthy enough to not give up like she eventually did - it finally struck him.
He would never see her again. He would never hear her laugh, or her crying, or her singing again. He would never tell her a story again.
He would never tell her how much she meant to him. And the moment he realised that every moment without her would be torture, he understood the most important part.
He could never tell her how in love with her he was.
You see, some stories end like this. With newly young adult boys hysterically crying over their friend’s grave, because they could never see them again. Some people go from healthy to dead in two years.
And Ukrainian men have three emotions. Rage. Passion.
And grief.