In THE LAST GHOST, the Death that comes to end a person's life depends on the nature of the cause of death. There are 16 deaths, called Fatalities, in the book. Over the next 16 days, we will meet one Fatality each day, and discuss which heartbreaking fictional character death belongs with each character.
Meet the Fifteenth Fatality, Gradual Expected Early Death, Commonly Referred to as Sasha
"His friend Sasha was talking to Kali, another death. They were both younger deaths, like him, and they both were gradual, expected deaths, except that Sasha only dealt with young humans, and Kali was only for old sick people. He was jealous of the gradual deaths in a way, they just riffled through their appointment books, there were very few surprises, they could even schedule a day, make plans to meet up with a friend, whereas he was literally being pulled into different directions any given moment…Similar to Woe, all of Sasha’s cases were young, so he appeared more like a teenager, and seemed to be the most excitable of the other gradual deaths. "--The Last Ghost
Sasha is one the youngest deaths, and is a friend to the main characters. Sasha is gradual, expected, early death, such as childhood cancers. Most of Woe’s cases used to be Sasha's, until they decided that Woe’s cases deaths happened so suddenly that they couldn’t be gradual.
Sasha, because most of his cases are children, has a very child-like nature to him. This is partly what makes him (and to some extent Woe) so terrifying—the dissonance between a happy childhood and a life altering diagnosis.
*SPOILER ALERT*
For real, spoiler, don’t @ me.
One heartbreaking fictional death that I think would have met Sasha is the leading cause of teenage tears, Augustus Waters in The Fault in Our Stars.
“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.” —The Fault in Our Stars, John Green
Obviously, it is heart breaking when a young person dies, in fiction or not, but I think Augustus’s death is so heart breaking because you weren’t worried about him. Which I guess leads to the question of if it would be Sasha if you weren’t expecting it, but I think his death was expected, if not the recurrence of his cancer.
What characters do you think would have met Sasha? What makes these deaths so heartbreaking?