Sophia packed a lot into her short life, and experienced a wide range of the human experience.
Her journey began in Toledo, Ohio in 1994 where she was born prematurely to a young pair of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and grew up in suburbs across the country, from Missouri to Oregon, Washington and California. She and her older sister Paulina were raised to a great extent by their grandmothers, who did not speak English and were strict but loving.
Sophia had the special status in the family as the first American born, which she noted made her eligible to run for president one day. The moves were always hard on her since she made friends so easily and bonded deeply with others. Sophia was happy to finally stay in one place for part of middle school and high school at New Roads School in Santa Monica, California, where she built her community, was introduced to creating her own art and poetry and truly thrived.
When she was 11, she started getting terrible headaches, was vomiting, and felt dizzy.
Around Christmas, we learned that she was diagnosed with a type of brain cancer called medulloblastoma, classified as a Grade IV tumor as it was fast-growing and aggressive.
Sophia’s first brain surgery happened right after her diagnosis. Due to the advanced cancer, her oncologist, Dr. Jonathan Finlay prescribed a very intensive chemo treatment and radiation following the surgery immediately, hoping it would increase her chances of surviving to 60%. She lost a lot of weight, and the ability to write, walk, and eat. It was the hardest time of her fight with cancer.
She spent 6 months in the Children’s Hospital LA rehabilitation center where she was re-learning basic functions that she had lost. She came home so weak and in a wheelchair. She had a port in her chest, a feeding tube, a shunt in her head that was continuously draining her brain fluid, and a patch on her eyes due to double vision.
Sophia had good days and bad days. She continued chemo and radiation, missing school and her friends. She often was getting an infection that caused us to rush to the hospital located on the other side of the city. However, she stayed optimistic and was determined to get better each time. She even had a long period of remission that gave us hope.
In 2009 her scans showed substantiation cancer advances. She received new treatment, bone marrow transplants and was hoping to get into experimental treatment offered in NYU for her type of cancer. Unfortunately, her blood counts, knocked out by all the never recover enough for the treatment trial. In summer 2009, her oncologist advised take time from school and just enjoy her last month.
All through the treatment years of hardship, Sophia was active not just in school but other organizations, such as TEEN IMPACT with CHLA, where she met a lot of young people who, like her, were going through the hardship of cancer.
Going through the hardship made her a very empathetic human being. She wanted to help young people who suffer not just from cancer. In the beginning of 2009 she applied and was accepted in the Teen Line training – a program where young people answer a helpline designed for teens. She finished the program right at the time she was given a terminal diagnosis.
In many ways, she was your average American teen, living in the moment, being silly with friends at the mall or amusement parks, walking to the corner store to buy candy and ice cream, doting on the family dog, watched America’s Next Top Model with great enthusiasm, owning multiple pairs of low top Converse sneakers and skinny jeans. She took selfies with a polaroid before selfies were a thing and would cut out pretty houses out of magazines pasting them into vision boards, and sketched up outfits and doodled and wrote in her journal.
While she was fragile in her physicality, her personality thundered and made a quick and lasting impression on many. Sophia was quirky, hilarious, and loved to make others laugh in part through her comedic and insightful observations of life. She could be edgy in a way that caught you off guard, with a quirky, sometimes sassy, sometimes even raunchy sense of humor. A couple of times, she had the opportunity to hang out with famous TV celebrities while they filmed and instead of being intimidated, she asked them profound questions about life.
She was the opposite of athletic, and the treatments later on made keeping a straight gait hard. I would pick her up and carry her on my back – she was so light.
I was the wild tomboy sister, obsessed with being in the water while she merely dipped her toes. Living in Santa Monica, she was not a swimmer or surfer, but she loved being by the ocean, taking it all in and hanging out on the beach, observing the world and simply being with friends.
There was a profound knowingness as part of her essence, her spirit. She was far wiser than me (living her namesake, which means “wisdom” in Greek) and in a way I secretly looked up to her, even though I was the big sister. She seemed to grasp the essence of situations, people and saw them for what they were, transcending the bullshit that can plague our daily existence – fear, negativity and materialism. She had always been this way; the fact that her mortality–which she faced so bravely and with an acceptance–was on the horizon just underscored it. And she knew what was truly the most important thing in life – love, family, friends, and was not shy in expressing it.
It has been over ten years since she passed away and we’re still unraveling the profound masterpiece that she made her life to be and the messages she left us with in her writing and art – she danced with reckless abandon, loved hard, got up on stage to share her thoughts and made people laugh, gave back to the world, and poured all of herself into her creative endeavors. May we all take a page out of Sophia’s book (not literally though*) and live more like she did.
Paulina Popovskaia, Sophia’s older sister. © All Rights Reserved 2024
Light is a collection of poetry, artwork, diary entries, and photography by Sophia Popovski.
Light is dedicated to the memory of Sophia Popovski. (April 21, 1994 - May 21, 2010)
© 2024 All Rights Reserved.
