My Friend Maya

Maya was our very first consultation the year we began the Palliative Care program. It was her last hospital admission, and just 6 weeks before she died. Our journey with her and her family was exceptional, largely because Maya was exceptional. Her father, also, is an exceptionally generous person who continues to be actively involved in our program. We are grateful to Maya Bryce for sharing her tender rememberance of Maya and so eloquently reminding us of the transformative power of such experiences in childhood.

My friend Maya died when she was 13 years old, several days short of her 14th birthday. She died of leukemia, a form of cancer where something was wrong with her red blood cells. And they couldn't fix it.

So after several unsuccessful treatments at the Brackenridge Children's Hospital the doctors gave her two options: to go to Houston for further treatment, or to stop giving her chemo and she would quietly let her days spin out.

I remember the day that Chris, her dad, came and told us. It was possibly the worst day of my life, the sort of day that goes on interminably with a mute misery lingering behind every action and every word. I wanted to be alone. It just wasn't supposed to work out this way. It was wrong. After a while I accepted it. And moved on. I didn't really believe it, because Maya was so present. She would always be. And I prayed that somehow the doctors were wrong and she would magically recover. And it would be a miracle, like Lance Armstrong, and she would be rescued from the throes of death by a great outer force.

But that didn't happen.

Maya and I spent long hours together, painting usually. She was more patient than I was in just about everything. She could sit for 3 hours straight, calmly painting swirls on a kite—she loved kites—totally absorbed in what she was doing while I talked her ear off since I had finished my painting 2 hours ago. She didn't say much at first, we didn't know each other too well but eventually we became quite close. We mostly did art together. As far as artistic comparisons went, I was Van Gogh, who applied paint to the canvas with a spatula and she was Wyeth, whose photographic detail is something out of this world.

We almost always had a good time together but sometimes, I felt guilty.

Guilty that I could run and she couldn't.

Guilty that I had hair and she didn't.

Guilty that I complained when I stubbed my toe when she endured pain that I hope I will never experience.

Guilty that I didn't have a windowsill full of drugs to take every morning when she did.

Guilty that I could sleep in my bed every night and she couldn't.

Those things were there, and I sometimes wondered if she ever thought about them. But we never talked about it, so I'll never know.

After she had made her decision to stop chemo, she was very tired. But she never stopped, never stopped playing with dolls or her siblings, never stopped living, never stopped painting. She was kind. She was thoughtful.

She had grace.

She wasn't bitter about dying. She seemed a little relieved actually. Glad that the pain could finally end.

I talked to her the day before she died. We went to the botanical gardens, the rose garden, and we talked.

Then we said goodbye and I never saw her again.

She died the next day.

I didn't want to cry. And the tears I had were for her family, because that is always who the loss is the hardest on.

And because the world lost a brilliant contributor.

Maya's death taught me what it is to be grateful. I mean, really grateful. Grateful that I have life to live, a healthy body, people to love and fingers to paint with.

I am more thankful now. I want to live life with grace, just like Maya did. So that in the words of Mark Twain, “Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”