RFL: Maria By Zaira Miles

Cancer can hit anyone.

Like most things in life, it is kept hidden from children when ever and how ever possible

My best friend lived two doors down from me, she was in the year above me at school.

We went to different schools but had pictures taken together on the first day each year

At some point, I remember starting to go see her in hospital. I went up with her step dad in the car, he drove so fast and I clung on to the door the whole way there

We built boxes out of lolly pop sticks, we watched movies, had races in the corridor in wheel chairs.

I remember watching while they changed the bags, giving her blood among a range of clear fluids which I had no idea what it was, the blood I recognised.

She went into remission and we had birthday parties.

I picked the cases off the nuts at halloween she wanted which I didn't like

She told me, Santa was not real

We raised money for the hospital, for her to go to Disney land.

I brought up a teddy bear, they were really popular.. forever friends

She came to the Christmas panto with my class, in my school because she'd had a chemo session when her class went

I watched her do her first holy communion, and was jealous of bike she bought from the money she was given... I wouldn't have a communion.

She always seemed to have a line in her arm, covered with a bandage, or cotton to stop the nose bleeds

We played outside on bikes

We watched the bands on the 12th of July in town, throwing sticks and waving flags

She came up to my house, with her bother and we coloured in because she was too tired to go out

On the 18th my mum woke me, and told me she had died over night.

I didn't cry.

I watched with other kids on the street from my door step as they carried a coffin into her house, it looked pink in the sunlight.

It was actually white.

I couldn't decide what to put on the flowers, but knew they were to be pink and white.

I watched as my mum told the ice cream van not to come into the court for a few days, not to play music

I was taken up to see her, I remember being stunned by all the crying.

She looked the same as always, at peace.

Her class stood, a guard of honor in their summer holidays as the funeral passed

She was diagnosed aged 4 with leukaemia and died aged 11.

I cried in September, when my sister had a song playing in which a child died.

I cried every time I watched My Girl, and her friend died.

Every time I heard the name Maria, I thought of her. I tried not to say it, ever.

Each land mark point in my life I wondered, what she would be like at it. Would we still be friends?

At the end of it, it didn't really matter. She stayed my best friend.