Lucia sat in the back of her Dad’s beaten up pick up and rolled down her window so she could feel the warm breeze of the summer night tickle her skin. A Johnny Cash song played faintly out of the radio, more static than music, but she still couldn’t help but hum along.  Her messy brown hair whisked around her face and her bare legs began to sweat and stick to the seats. She could feel the brightness of the sun against her face as it set. If there was such a thing as peace and serenity, this was it.

Day  101

It was 2 AM and Frankie could hear her parents fighting and sending whispered insults at each other. It was the same things that kept her up at night, that caused her parents to fight, her sister’s world full of hope and potential to slowly come crashing down. Her disease was killing her present, her parent’s past, and her sister’s future. So she lay there thinking about death because it seemed like the only solution that could get them all out of this mess.

Day 96

Lucia loved Frankie more than anything in the world. She lived for the days when Frankie’s cancer hadn’t gotten the best of her and the two could run around the neighborhood without fear that that day would be the last they had together. They would laugh uncontrollably about absolutely nothing as if there wasn’t a single care in the world. That’s what kids were supposed to do after all.

It seemed like they hadn’t had one of those days in years.

Lucia was always great at having a happy façade, when on the inside she reckoned for her life to be like it was when she was little. Before she spent her countless days watching her sister’s numbered days grow fewer and fewer.

Day 90

Frankie always admired her sister’s happiness. She was a dreamer. Lucia always believed to some extent that Frankie could beat what had beaten her down for so long. She believed that after years of disease, there could be years of health. But Frankie was a realist and she knew that she couldn’t hold on to her sister’s hopeless dreams. Frankie had always lived in the present. She was always so realistically aware.

Unhappily aware.

Day 87

Frankie woke up and felt nothing. The house was silent. There was no sound outside. Everything was numb and all she could hear was the pitter patter of her heart. She just lay there for a while because numb was good. Numb was better than the shocking sharpness of reality.

Day 70

Bright beams of sun and a clear blue sky. It was a beautiful day. Frankie and Lucia were wandering around in the backyard aimlessly just waiting for the hours to pass by.

Frankie was feeling better, happier, and that made Lucia happy.

Day 65

Frankie’s tests had come back the day prior, she was in kidney failure. Lucia and Frankie sat in the pouring rain, just allowing it to completely submerge them and all of their belongings. At this point both girls had reached a realization as to what was happening.

“Everyone dies you know, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, Frankie.”

“Yeah.”

Day 59

Frankie knew her parents didn’t have the money to keep up with her constant tests, surgeries, and hospital stays, the endless bone marrow transplants and blood transfusions. She was a ticking time bomb and it seemed that by the time she finally exploded, there would be nothing left for her family. There would be nothing left of her family.

Day 40

Lucia found her once joyous self spiraling out of control. Frankie always talked about how being numb felt so good, because feeling nothing at all meant feeling no pain. Lucia found her numbness in drugs. The higher and higher she got, the farther she melted away from reality. The cloudier her perceptions were, the better she felt. Things were easier to deal with and when you couldn’t feel anything at all.

She knew she had a problem.

Day 36

Lucia watched as her sister lay hopelessly in the hospital bed. The wrinkly white linens Frankie was wrapped in, the white walls, the single white chair in the corner of the room, it all felt so terribly sterile. She couldn’t help but become mesmerized by the drop and fall of her sister’s heart beat on the monitor. She would sit there and watch her heart beat forever if it meant Frankie could live forever.

Day 32

“What happens after you die anyway?”, Frankie thought aloud. “I just hope that it’s peaceful and easy. And fast. It’ll probably feel like I’m drifting into oblivion. Maybe It’ll stay that way forever, or maybe I’ll find something that makes me happy and I’ll have an eternity of peace.”

“Frankie what are you talking about?”, Lucia said in a groaning dull voice as she shifted half asleep.

“Nothing.”

Day 30

Frankie had always struggled to find an identity. What does a girl who is isolated from the outside world identify with? Who does a girl that won’t see her eighteenth birthday connect with? Part of Frankie’s internal struggle with depression not only had to deal with her obvious sickness, but also the fact that she didn’t truly know who she was other than “that girl with cancer”. In Frankie’s internal struggle to find her identity, she understood that being sick symbolized no future and a vanishing past.

She was always a terribly realistic person.

Day 27

Lucia was sick of watching her sister rot away in that hospital bed with nothing to look at but white walls and white linens. Just being in there felt like death to her. All Lucia wanted for Frankie at that moment was peace and serenity, but this sure as hell was not it. It had confused her that the people who had the shortest time to live were spending there last breathing, conscious moments in a place so void of life and happiness.

Day 23

Frankie had decided that she was ready to die months ago. She was finished living a sad and unfulfilling life on Earth, as horrible as that seemed. She could only hope that there was more for her after everything was over. It seemed that as she was dying, hope was a beautiful thing to hold on to, but so difficult to grasp.

Day 21

In her final days, Frankie held onto the few happy memories of her past, and for a little while the memories of happiness and laughter made everything seem okay. She remembered the times when her and Lucia were maybe nine and seven and they had nothing to worry about other than their nagging over protective parents who always seemed to ruin the fun. She remembered the days when Lucia was so full of life and her radiant smile was enough to make anyone have hope. That was all she ever wanted for her sister after she was gone. A full life of radiant smiles, genuine happiness, and hope.

Day 19

Lucia’s parents had given up on her around the same time they had given up their hopes in Frankie. Lucia always thought that when it seemed like your world was crashing down, your parent’s were supposed to be you anchor of stability. Everyone dealt with tragedy differently, and knowing they were losing their first born child caused her parent’s to spiral into their own depressions, farther and farther away from their children. She never thought she would miss those over protective nagging people. At least over protective meant they cared, absent meant nothing at all. That’s why she knew she always had to be there for her sister. She wanted to stay by her side and hold her hand until she couldn’t anymore.

Day 14

Frankie lay in bed and listened to her heartbeat, that was pretty much all she did in those final days. A beating heart was a tell tale sign she was still alive and she needed a reminder as to what was reality and what was not.

There was a lot going on in her head.

She just wanted everything to stop.

Day 12

Lucia’s long brown hair whisked past the cold elevator door as she briskly walked to her sister’s room. There she was. Lucia could not fathom how someone could look so peaceful and serene in a situation so close to death. She looked a lot happier than she had in a while, just laying there without any pain. Lucia supposed Frankie knew she was just barely hanging onto life. Maybe that look was a look of acceptance.

Day 5

Frankie hadn’t opened her eyes in days, but that look of peace was still engraved into her face. Lucia had decided that death was not the most awful thing that could happen to you after all. Sometimes it was a saving grace. It saved people from pain. It saved people from agony. It saved people from fear. It was saving her sister.

The little red line on Frankie’s heartbeat monitor had gone flat a while ago. Lucia was okay with that because she knew Frankie had left the world without regret. Even in only 17 short years, Frankie had taught Lucia how to love someone so much it hurt. How to stay by one’s side through thick and thin. And how to accept that the most fearful thing in life is not too scary at all. Lucia was confident that Frankie had found her peace.

Death is nothing to be ashamed of.