ppopnfresh@aol.com
but you can call me Tat. I'm
fourteen years old and last year I found out
that I have cancer in the left
of my brain. This means that I haven't got that
long to live. I have been
getting quite weak recently and have started to
lose my 'leg batteries'. It
means that every day I have to go for physio for
an hour to try and build up
more muscles in my legs. I am a permanent
patient at Pendlebury Hospital.
***
Tats was a huge fan of the Irish pop band
Westlife. She had their posters
stuck all over her hospital room that she shared
with another cancer patient,
Kiara Peterson, who she always called Ki. Tats
had been diagnosed with cancer
of the brain a year ago, and it was getting
worse each day. She had been in
to the operating room for her last operation -
to try and rid her of at least
some the cancerous tumour - for three and a half
hours, with half an hour
left to go. Her mum came into our room with a
smile on her face. 'What is
it?' I asked her. 'Can you remember the Make A
Wish thing me and Pete applied
for a couple of months ago?' she asked. 'Yeah,
vaguely. It was about
Westlife, right?' I replied. 'Yeah, well they've
just got back to us, here,
read!' Maria, Tatty's ma, handed me a piece of
paper with a shooting star in
the top right, the Make A Wish logo.
Dear Mr and Mrs Jacobs, it read. We are pleased
to inform you that your
request for your daughter to spend a week with
Westlife has been granted. The
group will come to Pendlebury Hospital at 8:00
am on Tuesday 3rd November.
They will stay for around 4 hours and leave when
they see fit. They will
continue to do so for seven days, starting 3/11
ending 10/11. There was more
about the M.A.W.F and some other things, too,
but I was too excited to read
anymore.
'Oh My God!' I exclaimed. 'That's
TOMMORROW! Dude! Woah!' Maria
smiled happily at me but whizzed around when a
doctor came through. 'Mrs
Jacobs, we have some good news and some bad
news. our daughter is out of
surgery and is stable, she'll be back in her
room in a couple of hours, she's
in the Recovery Unit at the moment. The bad news
is that the surgery was
unsucessful. The tumour is now inoperable. I'm
truly sorry.' You could see a
single tear travel down Maria's face, and she
went down to Recovery with Pete
to look after Tat. I fell asleep soon after she
left.
I woke up to laughter from the bed next to me,
but it wasn't just Tat. I
groaned and threw a pillow at the direction of
the noise and heard an Irish
voice say a muffled 'Hol - Je- wha- th-AARG! Get
it offa me!' That's when it
hit me - it was the 3rd! Westlife day! I opened
my eyes and say up. I blushed
as they all made remarks like 'Ooh sexy pajamas
baby!' and 'Strike a pose!'
Bryan laughed and threw my pillow back at me. I
smiled and looked at Tatty.
She looked at me with a huge smile on her pale
face. She mouthed to me 'You
knew! WESTLIFE! OH MY GOD!' I smiled at her,
yawned the mother of all yawns
and stretched. 'Oh hey, Westlife meet Ki, Ki
meet Westlife!' she said, like
they were old pals. 'Hey,' I said. I got a
chorus of 'Hey' s and 'Hiya, how
ye doin'' s back. I nodded and slammed my head
back down on the pillow.
Tats was talking to Westlife and playing games
with them for hours that day,
and they left three hours after they should
have. It carried on the whole
week like that and Tatty, me and all the guys
from Westlife got to know each
other really well, me and Mark espacially as
we're so alike. We both like to
sleep. A lot!
It was a couple of months since Westlife
visited, but Tatty wrote them loads
of letters and she actually got replies, a
couple of phone calls too! Well on
January 15th 2000, Tatty was lay in her bed with
me, Maria, Pete, Finn (her
brother), Bella (her best friend out of the
hospital) and Marcus, Kale (her
other sister) and my parents in the room, and I
was sat next to her, holding
her hand. Suddenly she breathed out slowly and
her hand went colder than
before. I looked at Pete and Maria and started
crying. 'She's gone' I said.
Her funeral was scheduled for three days after
the day she died, and on the
day of her funeral, who else should turn up in
black suits and ties but Kian,
Mark, Bryan, Nicky and Shane from Westlife with
a huge reef for Tats saying
'Bye Tats, we'll miss you!' They sat by me all
through the funeral and Mark
even hugged me when I cried.
***
We all loved Tatty greatly and miss her terrible
now she's gone, so I hope
that each person which reads this story will
save a little place in their
hearts, just for Tats.
She was such a kind
person, she didn't deserve to die
at such a young age. She was barely fifteen when
she died, it was such a
waste, she had her whole life ahead of her.
Please, remember this story, in
loving memory of Tatyana Angel Settaraeh
(Persian for 'Star') Jacobs, a true
friend.
.