Katie had planned her own funeral, which was how I learned that the difference between a cemetery and a graveyard is that a graveyard is connected to a church and a cemetery isn’t connected to anything. Katie hated churches, and she refused to be buried in a graveyard. She wanted her funeral to take place outdoors, not in some stuffy funeral parlor.
Joanne wiped the tears from her eyes. “Katie told me the day she was diagnosed that she was going to die, but that didn’t stop her from fighting anyway.”
It was true. I was there. Specifically, what she said was, “Mom, I don’t think I’m going to beat this cancer, but I’m not going down without a fight.” That was the kind of person Katie was, practical but headstrong. She ended up being right too, about her death at least, which I hated her for just a little bit, which made me love her just 9,999,999 percent more than anybody else.
“She wasn’t scared of death,” Joanne continued, choking on her tears. “Even in the last days of her life, she saw it as another step in the journey. She didn’t know where she was going to go, but she knew it would be a better place.”
That part was a lie, but at least it was only a lie of omission. She said it wouldn’t be any worse of a place, or at least that’s what she told me. She could have said something different to her mother. Then, she only would have been lying to one of us, but Katie always believed that lies were okay as long as they came from a place of kindness.
“I know she’s in a better place.” Joanne paused, swallowing her tears. “And one day we will be together again in the next life. Until then, Katie would have wanted me to live. She would have wanted us all to live; to embrace life, and to cherish every day as if it were our last.”
That did sound like her. Hopelessly optimistic even in the end, even when she had no reason to be optimistic. “Cheer up,” she would tell me whenever I visited her in the hospital during her chemo treatments. “I’m the one dying.”
She was wrong, of course. We were all the ones dying. She was just dying sooner than the rest of us. One day we would all be dead. What would happen to me then? Would I really be reunited with Katie, or would I just rot in the ground?
Joanne grabbed a rose from the foldout table next to her. There were over a hundred roses piled there. I looked around and there were only a few dozen people in attendance, but that was Katie, always hopelessly optimistic, even about how many people would attend her funeral.
I helped Katie plan her funeral, once the tumors in her bones became inoperable. She wanted me to put a clown nose on her, and make sure everybody honked it when they passed. It was the only thing Joanne refused to do for her after she died. It was a shame, because that was a perfectly Katie moment, laughing at death and making everybody around her feel slightly less uncomfortable.
After a moment of silent contemplation, Joanne turned to us again. “Now, please step forward and send my daughter into the afterlife with a rose.”
I walked forward with my mother and picked up three roses, then headed slowly toward the grave where the coffin was already lowered.
“I wish we had more time together,” I whispered. I threw the roses into the hole in the ground which held my best friend’s body. “Goodbye.”
Chapter 2
Katie had hundreds of friends before she was diagnosed with leukemia. They came to sleepovers at her house and cheered her on during soccer games. Everybody said they loved her. People loved Katie…but then she became sick. Once she got sick, the number of friends she had whittled down until there was just me again.
It was the best part of Katie being sick, honestly. I finally got to hang out with her without a gaggle of other friends around. Most of middle school saw me watching from the sidelines as Katie did one amazing thing after another, leaving me behind little by little. She kept me around once she became popular, but it was never the same as when we were younger.
Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely hated that Katie had cancer, but that didn’t mean it was without its benefits. Most things, no matter how horrible, had tangential benefits. Hell, they say Hitler kept the trains running on time, but that doesn’t mean anybody wanted another Holocaust.
Everybody abandoned Katie once the cancer got hard, and she stopped being peppy all the time, which meant she needed a friend. A real friend. Somebody who wouldn’t complain when she couldn’t go out on Friday night. One that held her hair when she threw up and who told her she looked good when all that hair came out during the horrible days after chemo when all she wanted to do was cry and sleep.
I was glad that person was me. We would stay up late at night, read books together, and talk about life and the universe, just like when we were kids. I never begrudged Katie her accolades or friendships. I really, seriously wanted what was best for her. I never wanted her to be sick and hoped against hope that she was wrong about dying. It turned out everything she said would happen, did happen.
I ended up in Katie’s room an hour after the funeral, looking out at my pale, purple house across the street. It sorely needed a paint job. Every night, Katie and I would say goodnight to each other through our windows, and every morning I would rush to the window to make sure she was still alive.
When I woke up on the day she died, her mother was in her room, crying. I watched her scream and
