“Judith”, her name still echoes in my mind.

She was 13 and struggling with sickle cell. All her life, she knew nothing more than holding her coat close to herself during the cold mornings and nights. Just like every other girl, she wished she could play around with her friends and get warm hugs from her friends; but instead, she was left out of friend groups and teased for being sick. When In class, she would sit on her desk all day, probably wondering why everyone else found it funny that she was sick. I would sit at the back, trying to understand how she exactly felt and it would simply be clear to me. She just wished to be happy.

During break time, every student would run across the compound having fun with friends. For her however, she would seat silently staring at her books. I bet she would be asking herself what she needed books for. During morning preps, she would wear all her sweaters trying hard to keep away all the cold. She would as to return to the dormitory into her warm bed, but the teachers simply would not understand, so, they would let her suffer in the cold all in the name of making her study.

It’s been 6 years now since she was lowered down into the earth. I remember shading tears that day when I received the sad news. We had just finished elementary school and I remember appreciating for a moment the fact that she was going to join a better school where people would care so much about her: but unfortunately, that did not come to pass. She left the world soon before she had a chance to meet really nice people.

Every time I think about her, I wish I had done something more than much more than I did to make her short life sweeter. Maybe she would still be alive if I had written her a note encouraging her. Maybe others would have followed suite and done the same. This way at least, she would have felt more at home in this world.

But she is gone, and the memories of her shall keep in my mind forever, she struggled for so long but was still to concentrate on her studies for so long. Now I know that we should learn to be there for each other since it is one of the things that make us humans and not robots.

Thinking about her not only makes me think about how it feels knowing that you  are about to give back every breath you take, but also how it feels like living your life on a pencil line that could easily be erased by a single stroke of a pencil eraser over it. And thanks to her, now I live every day of my life trying to make someone else feel better, because it is a lesson that I learned when I needed it the most.