Heather McManamy was diagnosed with terminal cancer in August last year, which means that she may no longer be able to see her 4-year-old daughter grow up and guide her through adulthood.
McManamy was diagnosed with breast cancer, which has since spread to her liver and bones. McManamy herself is aware that there is no cure for her stage 4 cancer.
The 35-year-old mother from Wisconsin, however, has found a way to make her daughter feel loved even with her passing by making sure that her child will remember her particularly during the most important moments of her life.
McManamy is now busy filling out greeting cards for her daughter Brianna to congratulate and send her warm wishes on important occasions and cheer her up when she is down.
She penned messages for virtually every stage of her daughter's life, from the time she loses her first tooth up to the time she will have her first baby. McManamy said that the last one she did was intended for Brianna's 30th birthday and the letters she wrote included encouragement, advice and memories of the time that the two of them shared together.
"I did them from when she's older or younger—random encouragement, bad day, wedding, driver's license, even first breakup," McManamy said. "Every one of these that I get to hand out in person will be an accomplishment."
McManamy described the pile of letters she did as the physical representation of all the things that she is going to miss. She has already made at least 40 cards over the last few months as well as videos for her daughter, who will be off to kindergarten this year.
It is possible that Brianna won't be able to open or read some of the letters that her mother wrote for her, but McManamy said that she does not mind if her child would be too sad to ever read the letters. All she wants is that her daughter would have the letter if she needed them one day.
McManamy said that she wants Brianna to know that she did all she could possibly do to be there for her daughter.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. In 2011, more than 220,000 women and over 2,078 men in the U.S. were diagnosed with breast cancer. Of these, nearly 41,000 women and 443 men died of the disease.
