When someone is diagnosed with cancer, the journey often becomes a shared experience for the entire family. Loved ones walk alongside them through treatments, uncertainty, difficult decisions and the emotional weight of watching someone they love fight for more time.
Today, we are sharing a heartfelt tribute written by a niece who lost her beloved Aunt Sophia to breast cancer. Through her memories, we get to know a woman who loved life, cherished her family and maintained her faith and remarkable spirit even during the most difficult days of her illness.
As you read her story, we invite you to reflect on the importance of family, the preciousness of life and the many ways we can support those affected by cancer. We also hope it encourages you to become more intentional about your own health and to support organizations working to ease the burden cancer places on individuals and families.
We thank the writer for sharing such a personal tribute and for reminding us that behind every cancer diagnosis is a person whose life, love and legacy matter.
Written By: Isheika Cleare
This is not an essay that I ever wanted to write because I have to speak of my beloved Aunt Sophia in the past tense, and that feels so wrong because she feels so very present in my life. But she no longer is, because in June of this year, she lost her battle with breast cancer.
Before I describe the way breast cancer marred her latter years, I want to talk about the vibrant life she lived before it…and thru it.
My Aunt Sophia was light and wonder itself. She loved, she smiled, and she laughed. Every time I picture her in my mind, she is laughing. She had so much joy in her heart and so much love to give. She had a husband whom she loved, two children whom she adored, and she lived long enough to have a granddaughter whom she doted on.
She left imprints on my own life in many ways. I went to the same college as she did. Like her, I am originally from the island of Andros. After completing school, she moved to Nassau, and it was to her warm and loving home that I would go when I left Andros during the summer months growing up.
I remember how well she took care of me. She gave me pocket money so that I could go to the movies and get frozen yogurt with my cousins. I would ask to go to the downtown public library near where she worked because we didn’t have one in Andros with enough books for me to read, and she would drop me off and pick me up from the library after work.
I remember she always referred to me as “my girl”: “How’s my girl doing?” I loved that possessive, loving term of endearment.
She was also so very full of energy and always had something in the works. Always had a plan, always working toward something. A new business, a new job, a new venture. I never saw her sit still. It was as if she were made of live wire: always moving, always making the most of every moment. And in hindsight, I’m so glad she did, because she lived such a rich, fulfilling, engaging, ambitious life.
That is the life I want to remember when I think of her.
I also remember how joyful she remained even when she had to face cancer.
It was my mother who broke the news to me that my Aunt Sophia had been diagnosed with breast cancer. It was shocking news to receive, particularly because my Aunt Margaret, my Aunt Sophia’s sister, had also been afflicted with bone cancer and would eventually die from her disease. I did not know then that my Aunt Sophia would follow her a little more than two years later.
These two matriarchal forces in my life. Cut down before their time. Cancer, in all its forms, is vicious.
I think what I hate most about it is how much it derails the lives of those battling against it, and the family members who stand beside them. Dreams and plans have to be deferred so that people can go to doctors’ visits, undergo treatments, and do all they can to pay the cost for those visits and treatments. They had better plans and aims for their precious time and their money, but suddenly the focus of their energy and of their lives (and the lives of their loved ones) must be directed toward keeping themselves alive rather than simply living.
It is such a heavy, sad price to pay.
My Aunt Sophia truly did all that she could. She, her sons, her husband, and her wider family did everything they could to help her live longer, to have more time with us.
Through it all, she remained herself.
I remember my final call with her. She was staying with a family friend in Florida, someone well into their 80s who is still alive today. Sometimes I wonder how my Aunt Sophia felt, being shy of 60 years old and staying with someone approaching 90. Did she wonder, “Will I get to live to be this old?”
During that conversation, I was so impressed by how unbowed and unchanged her spirit was. She spoke of God and Him giving her strength. She spoke of the cancer. She spoke about doctors’ visits and about meeting other cancer patients, and about hearing of the passing of patients she had met time and time again during those repeat visits. Yet she was still looking forward to the next treatment. She knew it would be costly, but she would find a way. That was my Aunt Sophia – she always looked life’s challenges square in the eye.
Now that she has passed, I find myself constantly re-reading the final text she sent to me.
She told me that the doctor was requesting another biopsy, that they were proposing another expensive treatment, and that she would find a way to make it happen and then, in the very final line, she reminded me to stay healthy and to do all that I could to preserve my health because she knew how precious health was.
Her very last line was: “Make it a great day!”
The final message I would ever receive from my aunt was her wishing me health and wishing that my day would be great, even though she herself was in the middle of this terrible struggle. I think about that often.
This month is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and now I think of all those who are living with this illness, those who have overcome it, those who are still fighting and those we have lost. I think of their families who are fighting alongside them, and of the families who are grieving, wishing they could have had more time.
This experience has opened my eyes to the fact that we must do more. We must do as much as we can before those we love face this battle, and even more when we learn that they are, or may eventually be, up against it themselves.
That is one of the reasons I now donate every month to GlobalGiving, and why I am actively finding ways in which I can help in the struggle against cancer.
I do this with a degree of shame because, in some ways, it feels as though I should have done it all along. I should not have had to wait until I personally felt the pain of losing someone to cancer.
Going forward, I pledge to do all I can to help alleviate the suffering and sadness that breast cancer can cause so that I may honor the beauty, the light, and the courage of my Aunt Sophia.
May she rest in peace knowing that she is missed, that she remains beloved, and that she will always, always remain so.