Isobel

When I was fourteen, my younger sister died. I think the reason it fucked us all up so much was that no one knew there was anything wrong with her. She was fine; a perfectly ordinary, happy little eight year old with skinny legs and big blue eyes. But one morning, I woke up, and she'd had a brain haemorrhage over night and gone into a coma, and as I was brushing my teeth, dazed and numb, my sister was having emergency brain surgery in a paediatric hospital thirty miles away. And if I can explain it in any way, it's that it didn't feel like anything had happened. Her clothes were laid out on the bed. I could see her toothbrush, next to where mine went. Her picture was hanging in the hallway as I made my way sleepily back to my bedroom.

It wasn't until seven hours later, when my father rung us and told us we needed to get down to cambridge, that something felt wrong. I felt something dark, something menacing, as if there was some kind of filthy, black smoke filling up the inside of me. It was wrong, and I felt like as the miles from cambridge grew less, this feeling of dread welled up inside me. It blurred my vision and tightened my throat like, but I kept quiet, and pretended to be asleep, so as not to scare my younger brother.

When we got to the hospital, my grandmother ran towards me sobbing and limp. She explained to us that my sister had passed away on the surgery table. And the whole space around me filled with the thick black smoke, billowing and twisting in wreaths and boughs around me, obstructing the worried faces of my family. I was carried inside, but the smoke curled around me like a curse, until I saw my mother, and it melted away into ash that clung to my clothing and skin a little. But she held me, and she whispered in my ear, and brushed away some of the ash from my back and shoulders.

I was taken into the room in which my sister was. At first, I couldn't bare to look at her. I didn't want to accept it. I didn't want that in my mind. But I opened my eyes, and saw my sister, asleep and calm on the hospital bed. Her eyes were shut, and she could have just been deep in a dream, thinking of us and breathing shallowly.

I brushed the rest of the ash off my clothes.

Life should be treasured. Life should be something that you grab with both hands, and fill with every speck of adventure and magic and love and culture and stories and memories and secrets and dreams and hope that you can find. If you get the opportunity to do something; take it. Run with it. Sprint with it. And your life will flap behind you like a million flags, ripping against each other in thousands of colours, filling the sky.

If you meet someone you love; tell them. There are some things in life that you only get one shot at. Don't you dare waste your life keeping secrets from people, sneaking around, stepping along the shore rather than plunging in and seeing everything you ever wanted to. Don't you dare.