Fairy Footsteps
Thursday, March 19, 2009
By: Tamara Compton

I'm just trying to understand how my life can change in a single day, in the utterance of one word. Cancer. It seems so unoffending, almost pretty if you forget its meaning.

When I was six years old I met Madeleine Grace, the beautiful girl covered in freckles that she had aptly dubbed "sprinkles". It would go on to become a long running joke of our friendship as she grew up to detest them in moments of adolescent angst - I would remind her of those days when she loved her "sprinkles" and we would laugh at just how much had changed since those early days of our friendship.

Ten years later I watched as hundreds of people came to mourn the death of the same sprinkled girl who was now God's sprinkled angel and lost to us forever.
 
Madeleine was one of the strongest presence in my life - she taught me that people are God's fairies on earth and if you look hard enough and truly believe you just might catch a glimpse of their wings. In the wake of her diagnosis and subsequent treatment this belief never wavered, her faith grew and she taught us all what it truly meant to trust God even when you can't understand why he's placed the obstacles he has in your path, even when you're facing the inevitability of death.

I relay because like so many, this disease stole her life unfairly before she had a chance to experience so many exciting firsts.
I relay because I miss her every single day of my life and I wonder if she was still here, would we be laughing and experiencing all the ups and downs of university together?
I relay because I'm scared one day she might slip my mind and this is how I keep her memory alive.
I relay because cancer taught me how to say goodbye before I was ready.
I relay because she can't.