I took the first photo of my daughter, Rebecca, moments after she was born on August 3, 2005.
Only 15 years later, I took the last photo of my daughter a few minutes after she died of cancer on January 3, 2021.
I’m a photojournalist. It was natural that I documented almost every moment of Becs’ beautiful life, as my wife, Marisa, and I called her.
As if she were 2 years old and her face looks bright from the inside. When he was on stage dancing, only 12, but defying gravity with grace and poetry. The moment she was playing in a wildflower field with our Cookie dog, her smile was as big as the sky.
Harder, much harder, documenting the disease and her death from a rare and extremely aggressive form of bone cancer.
As if sitting in the dark, receiving IV fluids after a chemotherapy session, her long, beautiful, dark hair was a memory.
When she hugged her teddy bear Snuggles tightly while she slept in her hospital room, in the middle of a terrible series of procedures that I hoped she could save.
And the moment her mother cried over her body moments after Becs died, the freckles on her face are a cruel symbol of her youth and beauty.
Last fall, Reuters published a Wider Image photo essay about our family’s battle with Becs disease, which was made even more impossible by the coronavirus pandemic that hit Malta, the island where we live. The essay ended with a moment of hope, after she was released from the hospital after several months of exhausting treatment:
“For Becs’ first discharge, a few days after he was discharged from the hospital, we took her late at night to the northwest corner of the island, a relatively dark area, so she could try to catch Comet Neowise. Although the comet was difficult to see with the naked eye, Becs was able to see it with the help of my camera and long lens.
And then I saw a shooting star. I made a wish – I didn’t receive any prizes to guess what that is. “
Hope was another thing then, something I still believed in fervently, always choosing to believe the best case scenario.
After she was discharged from the hospital in mid-July, I really thought the worst was behind us. How wrong, how deluded I was – maybe always denying things. I didn’t realize at the time that the reason nothing seemed to be happening with a possible treatment option in England was because the consultants there didn’t think it had a great chance, that the cancer would erupt again, so how she had already metastasized until she was first diagnosed at the end of 2019.
No one ever told me – the day I found out he was in considerable pain, a full month before he even had the first x-ray showing he had a tumor on his shoulder that day in 2019, it was already too late. for her.
Do you know what I mean? Delirious and in denial – that was me to the end.
Just two months after she was discharged, we had to take Becs back to the hospital. It was Sunday, September 27th. I didn’t know, but Becs saw our Cookie and Zippy and Zorro cats for the last time, saw his bedroom for the last time, left home for the last time – never to return.
On October 31, Becs posted on Facebook – “It’s been a year since I’ve been diagnosed with a rare type of bone cancer called Ewings Sarcoma. At that time I didn’t think I would be in this battle anymore, but here I am with more chemotherapy and more radiotherapy in front of me. Honestly, I thought I would come back to my life so far. I thought I would be able to attend online home school like any other normal student who does not go to school. Instead, I was too bad not to follow any of them. I thought I was finally done with chemotherapy and radiation therapy. But here I am reliving what I went through this past year. angry and scared, but there are also days when I feel grateful for all the love and support that everyone showed me when I needed it most. I could never have managed this battle without my friends, family, and even some people I didn’t give a damn about. I don’t know personally. So, I just wanted to say … THANK YOU “
Becs died, very quietly, without signs of suffering, on Sunday morning, January 3, 2021, at 9:20. Mars, as I call my wife, and we were both with her.
Becs was severely sedated during the previous week, so he was not in pain and did not know, according to doctors. Her condition seemed to have had a runny nose on Christmas Eve. It was the worst night – I spent the whole night awake. He was in such bad shape on Christmas Day that I didn’t expect him to arrive at the end of the day, this favorite day of the year. Wouldn’t there be a terrible kind of poetry about that?
She woke up a few hours late that night, fervently disappointed that she had missed Christmas, but thinking she would only have to celebrate it once she got better and went home. Mars promised to get her home at last, but Becs replied, “Mommy, don’t put my hopes too high.”
For the next two evenings, she woke up again short, to the surprise of her doctors, and we were able to talk, sharing a few more immeasurably precious moments.
After that, she slipped into a deep coma and never recovered, but we kept talking to her. I read her lots, finished the Harry Potter book I was reading, and started the next series, holding her hand. They say that hearing is the last thing to follow, so it was essential to make her listen to our voices.
Eventually, her breathing became less and less deep, until she became a very slight pant, with the gaps between them growing larger. Then they were gone.
I kept talking to her, convinced that now she could hear me and understand me better than before, telling her not to be afraid. I told her I would hold her hand as long as I could, but now she would find others to hold her hand, and whenever she felt ready, she should go with them. I kept looking up at the ceiling – don’t the people who died and then were resurrected in the hospital say they looked at everything from above the ceiling? So the Becs are watching from there? Was she confused or did she know exactly what was going on and was she calm and peaceful in all this?
All the nurses had entered the room and sat around her bed with silent respect. I’m not sure if they understood what I was doing, why I was whispering to her as I looked away from her body, but I didn’t care.
Word of Becs’s passing spread quickly. There was a lot of media coverage. The Archbishop of Malta, Charles Scicluna, was informed during a big Mass at the country’s main cathedral and announced his passing during the live TV broadcast. It was very emotional and people told me that she shed tears. He later contacted us and asked if he could lead the funeral.
We were allowed only 180 people at the church due to Covid-19 restrictions. Normally, it contains a comfortable 600; even if it had been normal times, it would have overflowed. We decided to make a live stream of the service so that people can participate in this way. It was not easy to choose those 180s and contact them individually, but the fun was a good thing. Quiet and lonely moments, like when I’m in the shower, are really very strong.
After his burial, Becs was taken to England for cremation. Mars and I agreed that we could not bear the thought or sight of her in a wooden coffin lowered to the ground. Then I finally brought her home, as Mars promised her we would, though not as Becs understood at the time.
Every day, every moment I think about her (and these are a lot of moments), I desperately look for the signs that people said we would meet, just as I am desperate to dream of her and yet I do not. Maybe I’m trying too hard and I have to let things happen and I’ll recognize them when they happen.
In the months before her death, Becs had played a game on her iPhone – “Sky Children of the Light”. She wanted me to join her, so I upgraded my old iPhone to a newer model. I liked the game and I liked playing it with her. As our avatars traveled together, walking through clouds and landscapes on a variety of missions, in different realms – which we eventually learned symbolize the various stages of life, from early childhood to death and beyond – she was my guide, my mentor, my teacher. She (her avatar, rather) held my hand and led me everywhere, and that’s how I wanted her.
Throughout her life, I tried to guide and teach her, and now she was doing the same to me. I don’t know if he saw this game as a kind of allegory of his own life – even if only on a subconscious level.
The only part of the game he didn’t show me was where your character has to die to move on; he said I wasn’t ready for that. Did she know she would die herself soon? He certainly never talked about it or asked about it. Earlier we decided that we would not tell him unless he specifically asked us to. How should you tell your child the news?
For me, the game has become a metaphor for what would happen once I finally pass myself – she will be there waiting for me, to take me and hold my hand, to act like guide and tutor, to take me where I need to go.
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