I took the first picture of my daughter, Rebecca, shortly after she was born on August 3, 2005.
Barely more than 15 years later, I took the last photo of my daughter, shortly after she died of cancer, on January 3, 2021.
I am a photojournalist. It was only natural that I documented just about every moment of Becs’s beautiful life, as my wife, Marisa, and I called her.
Like the time she was 2 and her face looks lit from the inside. The time she danced on stage, only 12 years old, but defied gravity with grace and poetry. The time she was playing in a field of wild flowers with our dog Cookie, her smile as big as the sky.
Harder, much more difficult was documenting her illness and death from a rare and extremely aggressive form of bone cancer.
Like the time she sat in the dark and got IV fluids after a chemotherapy session, her long and beautiful dark hair a memory.
The time she hugged her teddy bear hugs tightly as she slept in her hospital room amid a horrible series of procedures that we hoped could save her.
And the time her mother cried over her body right after Becs died, the freckles on her face were a cruel symbol of her youth and beauty.
Last fall, Reuters published a Wider Image photo essay of our family’s struggle with Becs disease, made even more impossible by the coronavirus pandemic that hit Malta, the island where we live. That essay ended with a moment of hope, after she was released from the hospital after months of grueling treatment:
For Becs’ first foray a few days after she got out of the hospital, I took her late at night to the northwest corner of the island, a relatively dark area, so she could try to catch a glimpse of Comet Neowise . comet was hard to see with naked eye, Becs managed to see it with the help of my camera and long lens.
And then we saw a shooting star. We made a wish – no prizes for guessing what that was. “
Hope was still something back then, something I still believed in fervently and always chose to believe the best scenario.
After her release from the hospital in mid-July, I really thought the worst was over. How wrong, how misguided I was – maybe always in denying things. I did not realize at the time that the reason nothing seemed to be happening with a possible treatment option in England was because the consultants there did not believe she had a high chance that the cancer would erupt because it had already spread. by the time she was first diagnosed in late 2019.
No one ever told me – the day we found out she was in a lot of pain, a full month before she even had the first X-ray showing she had a tumor in her shoulder that day in 2019, it was already too late for her.
Do you see what I mean? Delusions and in denial – that was me to the limit.
Just two months after she was released, we had to take Becs back to the hospital. It was Sunday, September 27th. I didn’t know, but Becs saw our dog Cookie and cats Zippy and Zorro for the very last time, she saw her bedroom for the last time, she left home for the last time – she would never return.
On October 31, Becs posted on Facebook – “1 year .. It’s been 1 year since I was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer called Ewings Sarcoma. At the time, I didn’t think I’m still in this fight, but here I am. with more chemotherapy and more radiotherapy on the way. Honestly I thought I would now have my life back. I thought I could go to an online school at home like any other normal student who doesn’t go to school. Instead I am been too sick to even follow I thought I was done with chemo and radiotherapy for good But here I relive what I’ve been through the past year There are days when I get angry and scared, but there are also days when I feel grateful for all the love and support that everyone has shown me when I needed it most I could never have fought this fight without my friends, family and even some of the people I don’t ‘I don’t know personally. So I just wanted to say … THANK YOU “
Becs died, very peacefully, without any signs of fear, on Sunday morning, January 3, 2021, at 9:20 am. Mars, as I call my wife, and I were both with her.
Becs had been heavily sedated for the past week, so pain-free and unconscious, the doctors said. Her condition seemed to have taken a nosedive late at night on Christmas Eve. It was the worst night ever – we lay awake all night. She was in such bad shape on Christmas Day, I didn’t expect her to make it to the end of the day on this, her favorite day of the year. Wouldn’t there be some horrible poetry in there?
She woke up a few hours late that night, deeply disappointed that she’d missed Christmas, but convinced she should just celebrate once she got well and went home. Mars promised her she would eventually come home, but Becs replied, “Mommy, don’t hope too high.”
On the next two evenings, she awoke again briefly, much to the surprise of her doctors, and we were able to talk and share more immeasurably precious moments.
Then she slipped into a deep coma and never regained consciousness, but we kept talking to her. I read to her a lot, finished the Harry Potter book I was going to read to her, and started the next in the series, holding her hand. They say hearing is the last, so getting her to listen to our voices was paramount.
At the end her breathing just got shallower and shallower, until it became very light panting, with the gaps in between longer. Then there were no more.
I kept talking to her, convinced she could hear and understand me better now than before, and told her not to be afraid. I told her I would hold her hand for as long as possible, but now she would find others to take her hand, and if she felt she was ready, she should go with them. I kept looking at the ceiling – don’t people who have died and then been brought back to life in the hospital say they were watching everything close to the ceiling? So did Becs watch from there? Was she confused, or did she know exactly what was happening and was she calm and peaceful about it?
All the nurses had entered the room and stood around her bed in silent respect. I’m not sure they understood what I was doing, why I whispered to her looking away from her body, but I didn’t care.
News of Becs passing quickly spread. There was a lot of media attention. The Archbishop of Malta, Charles Scicluna, was briefed at a high mass in the country’s main cathedral and announced her death on the live TV broadcast. He was very emotional and people told me he was shedding tears. He later contacted us and asked if he could conduct the funeral mass.
Due to the restrictions of Covid-19, we were only allowed to attend the church for 180 people. It normally comfortably holds 600; even if these were normal times, it would overflow. We decided to do a live stream of the service so that people could participate that way. Picking that 180 and contacting them individually wasn’t easy, but the distraction was a good thing. It’s the quiet, lonely moments, like when I’m in the shower, that it really hits me all hard.
After the funeral, Becs was taken to England for cremation. Mars and I both agreed that we couldn’t bear the thought, or sight, of her being lowered into the ground in a wooden box. Then I finally brought her home, as Mars promised we would, but not as Becs understood at the time.
Every day, every moment I think about her (and that’s a lot of moments), I’m desperate for the signs that people said we were going to run into them, just like I’m dreaming about her in desperation, and yet I am not. Maybe I’m trying too hard, and just have to let things happen, and I’ll recognize them when they do.
In the months before she died, Becs was playing a game on her iPhone called Sky Children of the Light. She wanted me to join her, so I upgraded my old iPhone to a newer model. I loved the game and I loved playing it with her. As our avatars traveled together, floating through the clouds and landscapes on a variety of quests, in different realms – which I eventually found to symbolize the different stages of life, from early childhood to death and beyond – she was my guide, my mentor , my teacher. She (rather her avatar) would hold my hand and lead me everywhere, and that’s how I wanted it.
All her life I tried to guide and teach her, and now she did the same to me. I can’t say if she saw this game as some sort of allegory of her own life – even if only on an unconscious level.
The only part of the game that she didn’t show me was the part where your character has to die to progress; she said I wasn’t ready. Did she know she was going to die herself soon? She certainly never talked or asked about it. We had previously decided we wouldn’t tell her unless she specifically asked. How should you share that news with your child?
For me, the game developed into a metaphor of what would happen if I eventually passed myself – she will wait there, grab and hold my hand, act as my guide and protector, get me where I need to go.
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