There were times when sophomore Chelsea Lynch would have something to tell her mom after a day from school.

She would run back to her mom’s room where she had been lying for months only to discover she wasn’t there.

Her mom had passed away.

Lynch’s stepmother of eight years was diagnosed with stomach and lymph node cancer on Feb. 25. Lynch received a phone call from her dad when she was at a friend’s house. 

“He just told me to come home right away, and when I was home they told me (what had happened)… It was really sad, I cried a lot and I don’t usually cry.”

Her mother was put on chemotherapy treatment for a month.

However, “they were just killing the inside of her body and not fighting the cancer,” Lynch said.“The doctors said it would be best if she just came home and lived as long as she can.”

After her mom was diagnosed Lynch would go straight home after school to talk and spend time with her mom. 

Since her mother’s diagnosis, Lynch had missed a lot of school, affecting her grades and causing her to shift classes around, which caused both her parents to get upset.

During the last month, her family came and spent time with her mother. 

“At our house it was very chaotic,” Lynch recalled. “There were a lot of people there and we were all taking our turns to go back in the room to go be with her. Everyone was getting frustrated because she couldn’t talk anymore. She’s just slurring and mumbling kind of and we’re all just trying to figure out what she’s saying and she’s getting mad at everybody so that was hard.”

At times, it appeared to Lynch that her mother was doing fine. However “the week before my mom passed away the hospice came… She couldn’t move; she was just lying in bed.” 

Lynch’s mother would often remind her that “she’s not going to be here, she’s not going to see me graduate, she’s not going to see me go to prom, get married, and just getting me all sad.”

Then on Sept. 25, Lynch’s mother passed away. “The house was quiet,” Lynch said. “It was really hard.”

Lynch didn’t plan on going to the funeral. “I didn’t want to see all that. I just wanted to remember her as she was.

They wanted me in the front with my dad near the casket, but I didn’t want to be there…but I just went for my dad and so I just stood in the very back with my boyfriend.”

Along with her mother’s death also came the loss of her father’s presence. 

“(Dad)’s been going out with friends a lot … keeping himself busy. He’s never really home. I think he’s sometimes forgetting to be here for me.”

Dealing with her mother’s passing has been a tough period for Lynch.

“The week before my mom passed away the hospice came and gave me a pamphlet (for teens dealing with family loss.)” 

But Lynch says, “I keep to myself” as a way to cope for now. 

“I know she passed away, and I’m not trying to forget her. I just don’t like remembering her as she passed way.”