Beautiful Happy Memories For My Family To Remember

Jenni is a single parent with 3 daughters aged between 3 and 19, and a terminal diagnosis of maybe as little as a few months. She’s also now registered disabled as a result of her cancer. Although she has sold her house and planned her funeral, amongst other things to help her girls, and tries to do as much as she can with them, Jenni worries a great deal about them, the impact on them of her diagnosis and their life after she is gone.

She describes them:

“Abigail is my little blessing. She is three and has so much energy; she wears me out so much but she is lovely. I worry as she won’t remember me really when she grows up. My other daughter Anna worries a lot and cries at school. She has a school counselor now as she wasn’t eating because of me being ill again. She is very soft and worries about me dying. She loves football and helps me a lot with Abigail every day. My eldest is Alice who is 19. She is very clever and starts uni this year. She tries to be a toughie and won’t go away far to uni so she is close for her sisters when I go.”

Jenni has a partner, Dave, who she is planning to marry.  Dave works hard to looks after Jenni and the girls. He has found Jenni’s illness a massive struggle too and has lost three stone as a result.  Sadly, when Jenni dies he will be alone as Jenni’s daughters are from a previous marriage so he will also lose the children.

In amongst all this heartache and struggle, Jenni felt that it was crucial to build some positive memories and wrote to 4 Cancer for help. We agreed wholeheartedly and sent her and her family to Center Parcs for a well-deserved midweek break.

She said:

“I wasn’t well enough to do any activities but my family did and we all had a lovely time. My daughters and I saw ducks, hedgehogs, rabbits, swans, squirrels and geese. The best of all was a mother duck who came to our window with her four ducklings – so cute!  We bought logs for the fire and my daughters lay on the sofa with me just watching the fire and fell asleep. It was quality time away making beautiful happy memories for my family to remember when I’m not here, which was only made possible through the kindness of 4 Cancer. I will never be able to thank you enough.”