Some Callings Start in Childhood…benji was his name!
I was nine years old the first time death sat next to me.
It wore Velcro shoes.
It smelled like scratch-and-sniff stickers.
It colored outside the lines with the best markers in the whole fourth grade.
His name was Benji.
We shared a desk at my Catholic private school. The kind of school with stiff collars, polished shoes, and quiet hallways that echoed when you walked too fast. I don’t remember the name of the math book we used. I don’t remember what I scored on spelling tests.
But I remember Benji’s markers.
They were the good kind. The juicy kind. The colors that bled bright and bold on paper like they had somewhere important to be. He would color pictures and peel off those scratch-and-sniff stickers, pressing them into my palm like treasure.
Strawberry. Grape. Green apple.
At nine, that felt like love.
Benji had leukemia.
I didn’t know what that meant.
I just knew he had tubing sometimes.
I just knew his hair would thin and disappear.
I just knew the other kids stared.
Children can be cruel in that quiet, curious way. They would whisper about the tubes. About his head. About why he missed so many days of school.
And something in me refused to let that stand.
I became his defender.
Not because I understood cancer.
Not because I had some grand moral compass.
But because he was my friend.
And he gave me stickers.
I would argue. I would snap back. I would stand in front of him when the giggles got loud. I didn’t know he was fighting for his life. I thought we were just fighting fourth graders.
He would miss school often. A few days here. A week there. Then he’d return, a little thinner, a little quieter, but still with those markers.
Then one day, he didn’t come back.
That part didn’t alarm me at first. Absences were normal for Benji. I assumed he would walk through the classroom door again, bookbag sliding off his shoulder, smile small but steady.
Instead, our teacher stood at the front of the room.
Her voice sounded different. Slower. Heavy.
She told us Benji had died.
Nine years old.
Do you know what death feels like at nine?
It feels confusing.
It feels unfair.
It feels like someone erased a crayon drawing before you were finished.
I remember sitting at that shared desk alone. My side. His side. Empty space where his arms used to rest. I remember not fully understanding what “died” meant. I knew it meant he wasn’t coming back, but I couldn’t grasp the permanence of that.
I just knew the markers wouldn’t come back either.
No one pulled me aside to process it. No grief counselor came into the room. We said a prayer. We went on with the day. Arithmetic. Recess. Homework.
Life kept moving.
But something in me shifted.
I didn’t have the language for it then, but I do now.
That was the first time I felt the sacred weight of someone’s absence.
That was the first time I understood that when someone leaves, their story shouldn’t just disappear with them.
That was the first time I realized I hated how quickly the world tries to move on.
Benji wasn’t just “the boy with leukemia.”
He was the kid with the best markers.
The one who shared.
The one who trusted me with his friendship.
And even now, decades later, I can still see his handwriting. I can still smell those stickers if I try hard enough. Memory is wild like that. It refuses to die even when bodies do.
I didn’t know at nine that I would grow up to sit in chapels.
To design tributes.
To write obituaries that feel like living biographies.
To become the woman who refuses to let stories evaporate.
But looking back, I see it clearly.
My calling didn’t start in adulthood.
It started at a shared desk.
It started with a boy who was quietly battling leukemia while I loudly battled bullies.
He was fighting for breath.
I was fighting for him.
And maybe that’s why I do what I do now.
Because somewhere in me, there is still a fourth-grade girl who believes that when someone is fighting for their life, they deserve someone fighting for their dignity.
Benji was his name.
And I will never let the world forget it. 🕊️
