A teenager’s heartbreaking essay about losing her mother to cancer has gone viral online, leaving readers in tears.
Ryan Harman, who recently finished her first year of college at West Virginia University, shared an essay she wrote for English class to TikTok, saying it made her professor cry.
She wrote how she had just graduated from high school when her mother took a turn for the worse, and shared how she spent the last few months by her mother’s side.
Now, Harman wrote, she tries to make her mother proud every day and is ‘so incredibly grateful to have the best Angel looking over me.’
Her video has now been viewed more than 13 million times, earning nearly 2 million likes and garnering more than 45,000 comments, including one saying: ‘Your English teacher is not the only one that cried.
‘This is so beautifully written.’
Ryan Harman, who recently finished her first year of college at West Virginia University, shared an essay she wrote for English class to TikTok, saying it made her professor cry
Harman wrote about how her mother succumbed to sarcoma cancer last year, when she was just 18 years old
Harman’s mother was diagnosed with sarcoma cancer in January 2021, and had to undergo radiation and chemotherapy treatments for over a year.
‘From the day he was diagnosed, she lost a different part of her life everyday,’ Harman writes in her essay, as she described her late mother as ‘strong, resilient, loving, caring and most of all the best mom anyone could ask for.’
By the time Harman graduated high school in Maryland in May 2022, the teenager said her mother did not get out much.
Still, she was able to watch Harman walk across the stage and get her diploma, even though ‘it took a lot out of her.’
To celebrate her accomplishments, Harman said she and her friends went on a week-long beach trip.
‘All week long while I was away, I was texting my mom, telling her all of the drama going on with all my friends and Facetiming her. Until Friday came along and my mom stopped answering my texts and my FaceTime calls,’ she wrote.
‘I was a little worried and debated texting my dad to see if she was OK, but let it go and continued on with my last night at the beach.’
When she returned home the next day, Harman said she was excited to tell her family all about the trip.
‘Instead, I came home to my mom in bed, and my dad sat me and my two older siblings down, and told us that our mom wasn’t doing well, and he was very worried,’ the teenager recalled.
‘At the time, I was thinking my dad was freaking out and exaggerating, and that she was going to be OK.’
But instead her father brought her mother to the hospital, where doctors informed the family that her spine was 75 percent collapsed because the tumors were growing so rapidly at that point, and she was put on hospice care.
‘The first couple days following her entering hospice care, I was in shock,’ Harman recounted. ‘I didn’t believe that my mom was going to die when I was only 18 years old.’
She recalled texting her older sister, asking if their mother was really about to die, and when her sister said she will die within the next few weeks, ‘I knew from that point on, I was going to take advantage of the time left with my om and not have any regrets.
‘I did not want to look back at the last few weeks I had left with my mom and think, “I wish I had more time with her,” so I did everything in my power to protect my future self from regret.’
Harman said she laid in bed with her mom, holding her hand as friends and family members came to check in on her.
‘I couldn’t imagine what my life was going to become,’ Harman wrote.
‘My mom reminded us daily that she loved us, and that when she passes, she wants us to move forward.
‘She told us, “When I take my last breath, I want you guys to dance, don’t cry, dance.”‘
In her essay, Harman described her mother as ‘strong, resilient, loving, caring and most of all the best mom anyone could ask for’
Harman wrote that her mother loved to spend time at the beach, because it meant spending time with her three children
In the weeks that followed, Harman said she heard her mother talking to her deceased grandmother, telling her she would see her soon.
‘The stress that my family endured was something I would not wish on anyone,’ the college student shared. ‘We were on lockdown, spending time with my mom and watching her slowly go through the different stages of death.’
By July 7, she said, her mother had told her father, ‘I’m so tired, I need to go, I will see you later’ and closed her eyes.
‘My dad came down the staris and told us we all need to say our final goodbyes,’ Harman recounted.
‘I started pacing back and forth. I did not want to say bye to my to my best friend.’
Eventually, though, she ‘started my journey up the stairs, with tears rolling down my cheeks, and I stopped, I couldn’t do it.’
After crying in her parents’ bathroom for a moment, Harman finally ‘walked to my mom, kissed her on the forehead and told her I would see her later and that I loved her.’
But her mother later opened her eyes.
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‘I was upset my mom was alive. I felt like such a horrible human,’ she wrote.
At that point, she said her father decided to have her and her siblings stay at their aunt’s house at the beach ‘because he didn’t want us to see her in that state anymore.’
Harman said that after her mother was put on hospice, or palliative, care she stayed by her bedside
Harman said she would hold her mother’s hand, as her mother told her and her siblings to dance when she took her last breath
But the beach only made her think of her mother even more.
‘The beach was my mom’s favorite place,’ Harman explained. ‘She would sit on the beach from 9am to 5pm every chance she would get.
‘She would take any chance she got to go to the beach, especially since it meant spending more time with her kids.’
One day, Harman said she was sitting on the beach ‘and had a thought that I needed to tell my mom, but realized I couldn’t.
‘My mom was still alive, but I couldn’t talk to her,’ she said. ‘I felt weak, I didn’t want this to be the end.’
She then decided to go back home.
A few days later, when her siblings were at a Jason Aldean concert, Harman said she heard her mother’s ‘death rattle.’
‘I knew today was the day,’ she said. ‘From then on, my dad and I alternated going in and checking on her until about 7:30.
‘We laid in bed with her and realized her skin was ice cold,’ she said. ‘I laid there until I couldn’t anymore, and I went downstairs.’
‘Around 9pm, my worst nightmare came true. I heard my dad’s footsteps and turned the corner and said, “I think so, I think she’s gone.”
‘I had never felt a true hart break and such emptiness ever,’ Harman said.
In her powerful essay, Harman shared how her mother’s condition worsened until she finally passed away last summer. She said she now believes her mother is watching over her
Her and her father then had to call her siblings, who were still at the concert.
‘We called each of them about 20 times,’ Harman recounted. ‘My brother finally picked up and we had to tell them over the phone.
‘I heard my sister scream and sob — that was the moment where I realized this is real life.’
When they returned home, Harman wrote, ‘my sister looked up at me and said, “We didn’t answer your calls because we were dancing. We were dancing when mom took her last breath, just like she wanted.”
‘I felt relief in this moment,’ Harman said, ‘my mom passed away just the way she wanted to, and I knew she wasn’t in pain anymore.’
‘As I continue living life without my mom, I realize every single thing I do is to make her proud,’ Harman concluded her essay.
‘As I am constantly paralyzed by the pain that is caused by her death, I remind myself that I am lucky enough to feel this great amount of pain because my mother was such a phenomenal person.
‘There is nothing I wish more than to be able to pick up the phone and call my mom, but I feel peace that she is watching over me and sees my every move,’ she said.
‘I celebrate her existence every day, and am so incredibly grateful to have the best Angel looking over me.’
