After months of appointments, treatments, fear, and exhaustion, she was supposed to ring the hospital’s victory bell with all of us cheering beside her.
I showed up with flowers, balloons, and my phone ready to capture the moment.
Instead, we discovered that our family didn’t even bother to come.
My name is Marissa, and if you had asked me a year earlier, I would have told you that I came from a close family.
We had Sunday dinners almost every week.
We celebrated birthdays together.
We filled every holiday with noisy conversations, shared recipes, and endless family photos.
At least, that was the picture we showed everyone else.
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