For a mother, there is nothing more painful than losing her own child. And being reminded of that fact can be just as painful.
But for one U.K. mom, she has no compunctions remembering.
In fact, mom Julie Apicella even took to Facebook to mark her daughter Emily’s passing, and the result is heartbreaking.
The Facebook photo shows two images merged together. The left side shows Emily posing at home dressed for her first day in school. The right side shows the same background, but Emily is no longer in it.
The left side is marked by the year 2015, while the right photo is marked this year, 2016.
“Obviously someone very special missing—my daughter Emily,” the caption reads. “Imagine if your school photo this year is the LAST you will ever be able to take and will just be a memory to remember.”
In a local news report, Fenland Citizen said that eight-year-old Emily died on December 2015 after battling with kidney cancer called Wilms tumor.
It wasn’t an easy time for the girl; as part of her treatment, she had to undergo rounds of radiation and chemotherapy. She also had to undergo stem cell harvesting and transplant. At one point, she even had to undergo surgery to remove her kidney.
Read the full Facebook post of Emily’s mom on the next page!
“Emily was very brave and mature,” Emily’s father told the Fenland Citizen. “There was one occasion when she was feeling really ill but insisted on getting up to ride her bike to show our vicar Dawn Mason, who was visiting.”
Sadly, she succumbed to her illness.
Now, nine months after her passing, Emily’s memory lives on, and her mom wants to use this to give awareness to people of pediatric cancer.
“Raising awareness of symptoms and that childhood cancer is not rare is the first hurdle to jump,” she writes in the caption. “Eventually the gold ribbon of childhood cancer will be as well known as the pink ribbon for breast cancer but it takes people to actually post on social media etc. for this to happen.”
Her Facebook post has since been shared over ten thousand times.
READ: 15 Cancer signs in children that you might be ignoring
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