I was homeschooled when I was a kid. This was in the late 80s, early 90s, before the internet or the wide array of networks and social activities available to connect homeschooling families. Without the resources available now, my parents had to figure out how to do it on their own. Academically, they did pretty good. Socially, it was a bit harder. My siblings did soccer, karate. I did Campfire Kids (a co-ed knock-off of Girls Scouts). We were extremely active in our church. But I turned out to be a kid who didn’t have a ton of friends growing up.

The church we went to had a school on its campus that ran from kindergarten through eighth grade. Although I homeschooled the majority of my childhood until high school, I did go through some grades at the church school (kindergarten, fourth grade, eighth grade). So I knew most of the kids in my grade level – many of them were also in Sunday school, which I attended each week. I wasn’t in the inner circle with these kids, but I had known many of them since kindergarten.

One of these kids was a girl named Sharis. She was a sweet girl. She had long, lanky brown hair and a smile that would spread from her mouth all the way across her cheeks. She was a quieter kid, not boisterous or outspoken. But she was friendly and creative. We went through kindergarten together, and although we weren’t super close, we maintained a friendship when I began to be homeschooled and she stayed enrolled.

Three years later when I was nine and wanting more friends, I begged my parents to let me go back to school for fourth grade. As a result, I went back to the church school for the year. It didn’t turn out the way I had hoped; at nine and ten, kids tend to run in packs with cliques already formed – I hadn’t been there for the forming, so I was on the outside looking in. But one bright spot from fourth grade was Sharis. She had a best friend, and the two of them were inseparable. But Sharis still invited me to play with them at recess, to walk around the field together, and stand with them in line. She still had that big smile, and a way of pushing her hair out of her face when she was really concentrating on her school work. She invited me to her birthday party sleepover, with all of the other girls in our class. I remember us eating pizza and feeling like a normal kid. During a year that was hard for me socially, Sharis was someone who made it a little easier. She probably didn’t even know she was doing it.

For fifth grade, my parents and I decided to bring me back home, the social experiment of fourth grade having been more difficult than expected. I continued to go to Sunday School, where I would see Sharis and talk with her occasionally. Then one day, my parents sat me down and told me some news: Sharis was sick. She had been diagnosed with cancer.

This wasn’t my first experience with someone I knew getting sick – when I was ten, my four-year-old cousin had tragically died of leukemia and that was the first time I ever saw my dad lose it and cry in front of me. But my cousin and his family lived a state away in Oregon, and although I cried over it, he and I hadn’t been close. Sharis’ diagnosis was the first time I had the experience of watching a friend get sick, and then try to fight for her life.

Sharis’ cancer was diagnosed as Rhabdomyosarcoma. Although at the time I knew the name of her cancer, I didn’t know anything about it. I only recently researched it, and discovered that it is a tumor in which malignant cells look like young, immature muscle cells; it’s the most common cancer of soft and connective tissue found in children. About 350 new cases are diagnosed each year in the United States.

I didn’t know any of that at the age of eleven. All I really knew was that my friend since kindergarten was sick. Sick enough to eventually be pulled out of school. Treatments were not working as her family had hoped they would.

This was when homeschooling worked in my favor – not being hampered with classes for the majority of the day, my parents would take me down to the hospital to visit Sharis when she was getting treatments. Sometimes she could talk, and sometimes the medications would cause sores on the inside of her mouth that made it too painful for her to speak. When that was the case, I would prattle about whatever I could think of – whatever short story I was working on at the time, a book I was reading, a cartoon I thought she would like. She couldn’t respond in words, but she would always look at me and give me her full attention – even with the IV stuck in her arm, even with the sores that must have been causing her pain. Her long, lanky hair was gone by then, having fallen out due to the treatments. But she still had that large, glowing smile.

One day as my visit was coming to an end, she rummaged around the side of the hospital bed and pulled out a small plastic case. It had a handle, like a miniature old-fashioned suitcase, and it was bright blue. She motioned for me to come over and take it. I opened it up; it was filled with beaded necklaces, all different colors. My favorite one, the one I remember most, was a bright green. “Is this for me?” I asked. Sharis nodded, and smiled. I asked her to write me a letter, if she felt up to it. She agreed, but never did. I don’t think she had the energy, at that point.

After Sharis came home from the hospital, I would visit her at her house. We would play Barbies and eat pizza and Twizzlers. A sleepover at her house was when I first saw the Mike Myers cult classic, So I Married An Axe Murderer. We would find marathons of Saved by the Bell on TV and watch them for as long as her mom would let us.

***

I was almost twelve and it was Thanksgiving – my family always celebrated at my aunt and uncle’s house, at that time. That day, my uncle stopped by to drop something off, and offered to bring me over to their house early, before all of the activity. I remember sitting at the kitchen table my aunt, helping to prep for the holiday meal, when my dad called and asked to speak to me. He told me Sharis had died that morning.

I remember crying when I heard the news, but after the initial shock, I somehow just compartmentalized. When parents arrived later that day, they took me aside and tried to hold me, but I gave them a big smile and reassured them that I was okay. I knew Sharis was in a better place now.

That was how I processed Sharis’ death for the next couple of weeks – convincing myself and everyone else that I was happy her sickness was finally over. That lasted until her funeral. As luck would have it, the service was held on what would have been her twelfth birthday. I remained stoic until I looked up at the front of the church sanctuary and saw a cluster of helium balloons. They were gently turning and bending with the drafts from the church, and as they turned further I saw that each balloon had printed on it the words, “Happy Birthday”. That was when I fell apart, and cried like the eleven-year-old kid that I was.

I kept the blue suitcase with beaded necklaces for years. I never wore the beads – but sometimes I would take them out and hold them – especially the green ones – and think about my friend. I know for certain that I had the suitcase until I moved out of my parents’ house when I was 21. I don’t know what happened to it after that. I would like to think that I took it with me when I packed everything in my childhood bedroom up, but I don’t remember ever seeing it after I moved out. I still think about those beads. I wish I knew where they were.

A few years ago, on a whim, I searched for Sharis’ brother, Steve, on Facebook. He had been a year or two older, so had never really interacted much with us. But he had a Facebook account and amazingly, accepted my friend request. After hesitating for a day or so, I eventually sent him a message. “Hi…are you Steve, Sharis’ brother?”

He responded back: “Yes I am, how’s it going? Courtney Kellogg, right?” (my maiden name)

I responded, “Wow. Good memory.”

Steve wrote back, “You’d be surprised. Here, I’ll prep you for the tears. I remember one of her last moments was with you. You spent the night. You two watched So I married an Axe Murderer and of course I was being a shit brother and trying to bother you two.”

I was amazed he remembered. I wrote back: “I think about Sharis still and thought I would say hi and let you know that, as weird as that sounds. It’s been a long time but some people make an impact. She made an impact to me, even before she got sick. I hope it’s not bizarre to tell you that, after 24 years.”

Steve told me, “It isn’t bizarre. It’s actually nice running into her friends…nice knowing that people do remember her and were in some way impacted by her…I’m not sure if this matters or means anything, but again, as I said how I recalled you coming over. It actually meant a lot, it stuck with me. I don’t want to speak with certainty not knowing how her friends felt (most likely, I’m sure it was hard for all, but at such a young age, hard to maybe grasp how to handle), but you and one other for sure made it very apparent you weren’t concerned. That stuck with me. Probably don’t need it, but thank you for that.”

***

Some people make an impact. Sharis did – enough that I am writing about her 28 years after she died. I think about how when people leave us, there tends to be a sudden outpouring initially – lots of people reaching out. Casseroles, meal drop-offs, flowers, hand-written cards, phone calls. And as time goes on, months and years and decades, that outpouring slows down. It’s the natural way of things. I think about how now, less and less people may reach out to Sharis’ family. They may have a life now filled with people who know about Sharis only from stories – who never saw her smile or heard her laugh. It felt important, in that moment four years ago, to tell her brother that she is still remembered, and loved. It felt important to write about my friendship with her, in this way.

May her memory be a blessing.