For Bella

For Bella

November 5, 2005 - October 7, 2023

By Michela Leiser

On October 7, I stayed up and watched my phone’s clock tick by the minutes with dread and a rising sense of panic. I did not want to move forward into a day that my friend could not come into with me. The minutes, of course, passed, no matter how much I willed them not to. The display on my lock screen changed from Saturday to Sunday, 7 to 8. Time does not care who makes it to tomorrow. Yet it’s been a month and grief still pummels me into my bed; for many of us Bella has died not once, but a thousand times with every subtle change to the mosaic of our lives that she did not live to see. What would she say about this? She would laugh at that. Would she like that? I don’t know. I can’t say. I wish she could tell me. I can hear her voice echoing around my head. I can feel her flit around the parking lot. I can see her ice-blue eyes glowing with warmth and mirth every time I close mine. She’s so close to corporeal I forget what happened, and then she’s gone again. Her birthday was the fifth of November. When she died, she was only two days shy of a month from when she would have turned eighteen. Teetering on the precipice of adulthood sounds so old, and then so young when I realize it’s all she had.

To say that all of our lives have been touched by the loss of such a vibrant person would be trivial. Like a comet, she lit up the whole world around her for a few brief, shining moments. Whether you were close with her or not, you knew who she was. Bella was magnetic- a neon sign lighting up the dark and a sparkler and the word vivacity personified with freckles and a lifelong penchant for ice. She was kind and free with compliments and funny and fiercely, fiercely loyal. She loved her people and she loved a good time. She lived up to her name; she barely comprehended her own radiance, but she truly, truly shone. 

It is difficult to properly articulate the anger I feel at her loss; anger I know my peers share. What did we do to be spared? What did she do that she wasn’t? There is no reason. There is no rationale. Blame won’t get anyone anywhere. It won’t bring her back. Terrible things happen to beautiful, beautiful people and we are the ones who go on; who must carry them. There is comfort, however, in shouldering the weight together. I have fallen apart and been pieced back together by people I thought I would never speak to again. I have held people again whose names had fallen foreign in my mouth. Even in death, Bella’s kind and personable nature permeates a situation. She had this power to make anyone laugh, make anyone feel good, make anyone feel, period. She hasn’t lost that. The love that balloons from our chests and embraces us warmly whenever we remember her fondly is proof.

I miss my friend. I want to be thirteen again and hold her hand one more time. For even one moment, I want to appreciate her presence with the knowledge that I won’t be able to love her on Earth forever. Our entire community is hurting, and we likely will be for a long time. To many of us, especially Bella’s peers, it feels unfathomable that the world has moved on at all. The seasons have changed, our flowers for her have withered, and her fate remains static. Yet although her life has come to a close, it is all of our honor, privilege, and responsibility to remember her and celebrate the fullness of the short life she did have. There is pain in remembrance, yes, but it is borne of love. Love that we can no longer give directly to Bella; but love that will bleed out of our eyes and ache in the tenderest places of our hearts and minds for her until one day it will finally soften. She is every bluejay, she is every deer, she is every song that she sang along to, every Wawa trip and every shade of blue I’ll ever see again. She is everywhere and in everything. She is gone, but she is eternal. I love you, Bella. I wish I could have told you more.