When Josh Todd graduates as part of the Class of 2022 today, he will remember his best mate who died before he had the chance to finish high school.
Carter Giddy was too ill to attend his final year at Townsville's Northern Beaches State High but the 17-year-old left a legacy, not only for his school mates, but other children who spend long stints in hospital.
He died in his sleep on May 25 after living with spinal muscular atrophy, a rare genetic condition resulting in the muscles becoming progressively weaker.
Josh broke down after he was taken out of class by school principal Robin Sprott and told of his best mate's death.
"I started crying," he recalled.
"Everyone loves Carter. I don't think anybody will ever forget about him. I think about him quite a bit. I'd tell him my problems and he'd be like, 'Josh, you can fix your problems. It's fine.'
"When I make more difficult decisions, I do kind of think, 'what if I had a conversation with Carter? What would he say?'."
Josh met Carter in year 8 after moving to Townsville from Bathurst in NSW.
They bonded, as many boys do, over a shared love of video games.
"It was also a lot of fun to talk to him. He had a really big mouth," Josh said, laughing.
"You could talk to him for hours. One day we would be talking about exams at school and then the next day we'd be talking about what was happening on the other side of the planet."
Carter taught Josh precious lessons about living his best life.
"Simple things like patience – having the stuff that Carter had, he had to be really patient," Josh said.
"He had it really hard. He wouldn't really complain. I actually don't know how he was always so happy because he was always in pain. He'd have to ask someone else to scratch a mozzie bite or … to stretch his neck out.
"Especially this year, he didn't have a lot of muscle left. He didn't really play games anymore. All he wanted to do was hang out with friends.
"Whenever he had the chance, he'd say, 'Hey guys, do you want to come over?'."
A legacy for others
Carter spent lengthy periods of time in hospital.
In 2019, he worked with Children's Health Queensland, Griffith University, Central Queensland University, and other bodies on a virtual reality pilot project aimed at helping adolescents engage with their dreams while undergoing challenging clinical treatment.
During a 10-week stay at the Queensland Children's Hospital in Brisbane for pancreatitis, the self-confessed "space nerd" worked with researchers and filmmakers to create a virtual reality world on the moon, which allowed him to meet and play fetch with "Laika" – a Russian dog that was the first animal to orbit Earth.
Children's Health Queensland Arts in Health program manager Lynne Seear said Carter had become the face of the ongoing Future Stories project, which aimed to harness virtual reality as an entertainment and distraction tool for adolescents required to spend significant time in hospital.
"We value Carter's legacy," Ms Seear said.
"Carter was a phenomenal young man. He taught us so much.
"The conversations we were having with Carter this year were about him continuing to be involved. We wanted him to be an advocate, a champion, for the project.
"We were having those conversations up until a couple of days before he died.
"It made it very clear what the stakes are in this project. We're working with very ill young people.
"We knew he had a progressive disease. He just was so full of life and energy, that it seemed impossible he was just gone."
Carter's spirit lives on in the interviews he did with Children's Health Queensland as part of the virtual reality (VR) project, describing it as "something to look forward to in-between doctors' appointments".
After spending his own life in and out of hospital, he could see the benefits of VR for all long-term paediatric patients.
"With a lot of kids who are in hospital for a very long time, they not only suffer from mental illness, but a lot of other things," he said in 2021.
"With VR, it can give them a childhood that they never had. They can have fun without leaving their hospital room.
"People in hospital and kids in hospital and everyone else just need to have a little bit more hope for the future because getting into the next decade, we should be excited.
"Keep hope. Never lose hope."
Carter said he tried not to "whinge or whine or be held back" by his disabilities.
"At the end of the day Stephen Hawking was a great physicist and he had one of the worst conditions you could possibly have, so what am I whingeing about?" he said.
"I've got nothing to worry about. It could be a lot worse. It's not that bad."
Carter 3D printed his own modifications
When he started to lose the ability to use his arms and hands, he turned to 3D printing to engineer ways to make his life easier.
"In the end he just found it so hard to drive his wheelchair," his mum Tanya Giddy said.
"He really struggled to get around corners. He was just so incredibly weak. But he figured out ways to do things."
He designed and 3D-printed an attachment for the controller on his motorised wheelchair that allowed him better manoeuvrability.
Carter also worked with his uncle Troy Nuttall and members of the Sporting Shooting Wheelies Club in Townsville to allow him to fulfil a dream to be able to fire a rifle with modifications.
He designed and 3D-printed attachments for the rifle, overcoming significant challenges to be able to shoot the gun using the scope.
The last time he went shooting, less than a week before he died, was also the first day all the modifications to his gun worked.
"He'd had such a great day shooting that day," Ms Giddy said.
"He recorded his shots down the scope and he texted them to me. He was so proud.
"He was like, 'Mum, look at this', not realising that was the last time he'd shoot the gun."
Ms Giddy will attend the Northern Beaches State High School graduation ceremony tonight in memory of her son and out of respect for his schoolmates, who will be among the more than 52,000 Queensland students to finish school this year.
"They were great friends to him," Ms Giddy said.
"They didn't really see the wheelchair. They just saw Carter. They understood that Carter couldn't do much. But they would help him in a heartbeat.
"They were just such great kids."
Ms Sprott, who has been the principal at Carter's high school for 11 years, said schools all over Queensland this week would be remembering classmates who did not survive till the end of year 12.
"There's an element of sadness for all of us when they don't make that important milestone," she said.
"Carter was an integral part of our school. He was very cheeky and very clever. He fostered friendships across the school. His peers respected and admired him and everybody who worked in the school respected and admired him.
"Every single child that we work with leaves a little grain on us. His was probably a little bit bigger."
The Children's Health Queensland Community Choir sang and recorded John Rutter's song A Flower Remembered in honour of Carter a few days after he died.
Carter's family, including dad Glen and older brother Leyton, played the recording at his funeral.
"A flower remembered can never wither," the choir sang.
"Forever blooming as bright as day,
"It's fragrance lingering like music softly playing,
"A gentle voice that saying,
"I'll never fade away."
