- Alyssa and her twin sister Rhiannon heartbreakingly lost their mum, Virginia, to cancer when they were just nine years old
- While the loss was devastating, Virginia found a special way to show her daughters on every birthday how much she loved them
- Alyssa shares a special message to her mum, thanking her for the incredible gesture
Here Alyssa Stevenson, 31, pens a letter to her mum in her own words.
Some of my happiest memories are wrapped up in birthdays.
You always made them magical, long before I understood how precious those moments were.
And you ensured that my twin, Rhiannon, and I got a birthday cake each!
One year you baked us cakes with bear faces on them.
‘Oh, I love it!’ I cried.
‘I love mine too!’ Rhiannon exclaimed.
‘I’m so pleased,’ you smiled.
For you, birthdays were a chance to wrap your love around us so tightly we felt it for days.
I didn’t know then that you were quietly preparing for birthdays you knew you wouldn’t be here to celebrate.
When you first got sick, we were only two – and too young to understand the words lymphoma or cancer.
We only knew something scary was happening again years later, when our teacher gave us stuffed toy dogs to cheer us up ‘while Mummy’s in hospital’.
After treatment, remission came in 2002 when we were eight. Dad, Ken, then 41, was overjoyed.
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We celebrated with a trip to Fiji.
We went snorkelling and it was magical.
Then your relapse came out of nowhere.
We spent the rest of the trip gathered around you in a hospital room.
Back home, you weakened further, and one night an ambulance took you away in May 2003.
At the hospital, Aunt June guided us to your room.
‘Why don’t you tell your mum you love her?’ she whispered.
So we curled up on either side of you and said, ‘I love you, Mummy,’ not knowing it was goodbye.
The next morning Dad told us you weren’t coming home.
We’d just turned nine, and you were only 43.
Then something happened that stitched the two worlds back together.
Your funeral was packed.
You were the heart of our Queens Park, NSW, community, and hundreds came to say goodbye.
Rhiannon and I spoke, telling everyone what an amazing mum you were.
I tried not to cry, wanting to be brave.
But my world had split in two – life with you, and life without you.
Then something happened that stitched the two worlds back together.
On our 10th birthday, your best friends Bronwyn, Mandy and Jo invited us to lunch.
I didn’t know they were carrying out your final plans.
But at the table, Bronwyn handed us each a wrapped gift.
‘This is something from your mum,’ she said.
Inside mine was your delicate silver necklace, and a card.
I’m still with you, you’d written. And I will always love you.
My eyes blurred with tears.
Rhiannon received a card and a piece of your jewellery too.
Even though you’d passed, you’d found a way to reach us.
I wore that necklace every day – a link to you that I refused to break.
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Three years later, on our 13th birthday, your friends brought out another gift from you – journals.
Mine was yellow, Rhiannon’s pink – our favourite colours.
Use this to express your feelings, Lissy, you wrote in my card.
I filled it obsessively, as did Rhiannon.
Every fear, every heartbreak.
It became proof I could still talk to you.
At 16 we received your bracelets.
Mine was silver, engraved with your name.
The moment I held it, I felt a deeper ache – not the child missing bedtime cuddles, but the teenager longing for advice about boys and how to become myself.
I wore it to school, tracing the letters of your name with my thumb as if it might bring you closer.
For my 18th, your friends handed me your diamond and emerald ring.
‘That was your mum’s favourite,’ Bronwyn smiled.
Rhiannon was overjoyed to receive jewellery as well, and a card with words of love from you.
We were amazed you’d planned so far ahead.
How heartbreaking it must have been for you to write those cards.
For our 21st, Rhiannon received your engagement ring, and I your gold ring with four diamonds – a Christmas present from Dad long ago.
When I opened your card, telling me how proud you were of the woman I’d become, something inside me broke.
And then came the birthday I didn’t expect to hurt – 30.
For the first time in 11 years, I sobbed.
‘She’s really gone,’ I wept.
I’d always been the ‘strong’ twin who comforted Rhiannon and didn’t fall apart.
But your last card made pretending impossible.
And then came the birthday I didn’t expect to hurt – 30. I didn’t realise how much I was expecting another card until there wasn’t one.
That morning, it felt like losing you all over again.
Then a white butterfly fluttered past me in the street.
You’d been sending white butterflies ever since you left, and I felt you with me instantly.
Mum, your love didn’t finish at 21.
It didn’t stop with jewellery or cards.
It didn’t have an expiry date.
It just changed form.
Love doesn’t end, it just finds new ways to reach us.
Every birthday has shaped my life – the childhood cakes and laughter, the painful birthdays where your cards arrived like a message from another world, and the adult birthdays where I’ve recognised I’m not alone when I talk to you out loud.
And of course having Rhiannon and Dad in my life means the world to me.
I hope you can see me now, Mum – building my business, writing our story.
And trying every day to live with the spark you had.
Until we meet again, I’ll look for you in white butterflies.
And I’ll keep celebrating birthdays with you in my heart.
