Tears Aren't Enough

Belle

Do you ever fear that you are going to lose someone close to you? Do you ever think that you might not see someone ever again? Well, I didn't. It was the summer after sixth grade. My hometown had just opened a new swimming pool and everyone loved it. Now, I can’t go there anymore without seeing her sleeping on one of the chairs, or dipping her feet in the water. The her I’m talking about was my best friend Erin. We had started hanging out at the beginning of the sixth grade when we were put in a group for a school thing together. After that, we were inseparable. We were always at each other's houses, or going to the pool when it was warm enough. And about half way through summer vacation she stayed a full week at my house. Nothing seemed wrong.

A few days after she had gone home, I was planning on meeting Erin at the pool. She showed up later than we had planned and said that she didn’t feel very good, but that she was just going to lay in the sun instead of swimming. I was fine with it and went back to swimming in the water by her chair.
After a few minutes I look over at her to ask if she felt okay enough to get in the water, she loved water. But when I look over at her, she was asleep. I just thought that maybe she was tired. The next day went by and Erin was sick. Just a flu is what I thought. The next night, as I was getting ready for bed, I heard my mom come into my room. She said that I should sit down, so I sat on my bed as she told me that Erin's mom had taken her to the hospital because she had lost sight in one of her eyes and she was running a very high temperature. I didn’t know what to think. Just that my friend was sick and that she would be better in a few days after getting medicine from the doctor. Erin’s problem wasn’t that easy to fix.

Days went by and no one heard anything about if Erin was getting better. Until one night when my mom got an e-mail from someone. They had news of Erin. I saw the look on my mom’s face as she read the e-mail. Then she looked at me and said, with tears in her eyes, “Honey, when Erin went to the hospital, they found a tumor in her brain… Erin has cancer.” My brain shattered. No, it was a lie. My mom was being lied to and Erin was fine. This couldn’t happen to a girl in a small town. Let alone my best friend. But it had. I shut down. I didn’t know what to do, or say to Erin. I couldn’t be the same me that I was when she was fine. I was scared of hurting her. So my way of not hurting her was to stay away. I shouldn’t have stayed away. I heard from people at school a month later how Erin was their best friend and was always their best friend and that it was unfair that their Best Friend had to go through this. They all said how I wouldn’t understand what they were going through because I wasn’t friends with Erin… She was my best friend when she found out she had cancer, but I never showed it.

The whole 7th grade went by like this. Erin getting sicker, and doctors saying she didn’t have long to live. Erin losing all of her hair from the chemo, and soon not being able to walk from being so weak. I went to visit her a total of four times after I found out she had cancer. I should have gone to see her more because just as fast as it had happened, she was gone. Erin died on June 18th. She was only thirteen years old. At her funeral days later I sat in a section of the church reserved for her closest friends. Everyone around me was crying. I just sat there and looked at the face of my best friend on the piece of paper in front of me. I didn’t cry, I didn’t say anything. In my head Erin was still there, not gone. None of this had happened and she was just playing a game. But some part of my mind remembered that not a week before she had gotten sick, she was at my house. And I was having fun with my best friend like we had the rest of our lives ahead of us.