HONORING AVA

I met Ava in sixth grade. She had this loud, infectious laugh that made everything seem funnier than it was, and she was my first friend after being so isolated during the pandemic. I liked her immediately. She didn’t try to be popular, but people gravitated toward her. She had a way of filling a room, not in a loud way, but like sunlight—steady, warm, effortless.

We became friends after we were paired on a group project, and something just clicked. She was so smart and funny, and was constantly whispering to me in class. We even had to be separated for talking too much.

Then, sometime in seventh grade, Ava got sick. It started with tiredness. She'd come to school with shadows under her eyes and sit down before the bell even rang. At first, we thought it was stress or maybe anemia. But then she started missing entire weeks. When she came back, she wore hats and headwraps. She didn’t say why.

It wasn’t until months later that we found out: Ava had leukemia.

I didn’t believe it at first. “Cancer” sounded like something far away—something adults got, something on TV shows, not something that could happen to your best friend in the middle of pre-algebra. But it was real. It was happening.

And slowly, I started to see what it meant.

I watched her change. Not all at once, but in painful little ways. Her hair, yes—but also her energy, her spirit. There were days she came in and barely spoke, her face pale, her hands trembling. She once told me her mouth hurt too much to eat solid food, and that sometimes, she could taste metal for no reason. She said it like it was normal.

I’d always thought of sickness as something temporary—something you could bounce back from with medicine, rest, and a little bit of luck. But with Ava, I saw that some illnesses didn’t just attack the body. Cancer drained you emotionally. It changed the way people looked at you, the way you looked at yourself. Some of our classmates pulled away, unsure of what to say. Some avoided her entirely. I think that hurt more than the chemo.

But Ava kept showing up. She made jokes even when her voice shook. She drew little smiley faces on her IV pole in the hospital and named it after our favorite movie characters. She told me once that she hated when people talked to her like she was “fragile glass.” “I’m not gonna break,” she said, “I just want to be treated normally again.” That stuck with me.

Still, I knew she was scared. There were moments when her walls would crack—when she’d cry after everyone else left the lunch table, or when she’d squeeze my hand so tightly it hurt during her worst days. She didn’t like people seeing her vulnerable, but she let me in. And that was something I never took for granted.

In eighth grade, she stopped coming to school altogether. Her treatments weren’t working the way they were supposed to. I wrote her letters, sent her stupid memes, tried to make her laugh from afar. Sometimes she responded. Sometimes she didn’t. I didn’t know what to do with the silence.

She passed away in February.

It was the first funeral I ever went to. I remember the flowers—bright sunflowers, her favorite—and the video they played, showing photos of her life. One of them was a selfie we took in sixth grade, with her wearing a tiara made out of pipe cleaners. I started crying the second I saw it. Not just because I missed her, but because it hit me how much she had to go through. How unfair it was.

That was the moment I really understood what cancer does. Not just physically, but emotionally. It isn’t just the hair loss or the hospital beds. It’s the isolation. The fear. The way it changes how people treat you. The way it demands everything—your energy, your hope, your identity.

It also made me realize how helpless it can feel to love someone who’s suffering. I couldn’t take away her pain. I couldn’t make her better. All I could do was sit beside her when she needed someone, and remind her, in every way I could, that she wasn’t alone.

Grief didn’t come all at once. It showed up in waves—at night, in the middle of class, when I passed her favorite vending machine snack. I started carrying things from her with me—phrases she used to say, songs she liked, little reminders. At first, it hurt. But eventually, it started to feel like she was still here in small ways. Not gone, just… somewhere else.

Ava taught me what strength really looks like. Not the kind that’s loud or dramatic, but the kind that shows up on the worst days and still tries. She taught me how to sit with someone else’s pain without rushing to fix it. And she made me realize that empathy isn't about having the perfect words—it's about staying, even when it's hard. Especially when it's hard.

I don’t pretend to have some wise takeaway about life or death. But I do know this: she changed me. And every time I show up for someone who’s hurting, every time I choose to listen instead of flinching away, every time I keep loving even when it’s scary—I think of Ava.