A 25-year-old British woman urged her young fiancé to “go enjoy life” in a heartbreaking LinkedIn post that was shared after she lost her battle with cancer.
Daniella Thackray, 25, of Leeds, announced her own death in the pre-written final message to her loved ones, who shared it on her behalf Friday following her death from a rare and aggressive form of bile duct cancer known as cholangiocarcinoma.
“Although we can’t control what happens to us, we can control how we react. I chose not to mourn the life I was losing despite being so devastated, but to instead enjoy every moment I had left,” the young woman wrote.
“As I have always said and believed you should enjoy the little things in life and cherish every moment! Romanticise your life! Do whatever makes you happy and don’t let anyone take the joy of life away from you.”
The heartwrenching post — which racked up nearly 40,000 likes — was accompanied by a black-and-white image of Thackray walking along the beach with her dog Leo, who she cheered as someone who was “definitely brought into my life to help brighten my darkest days.”
She also included a poignant quote by A. A. Milne in Winnie The Pooh:”“If ever there is a tomorrow when we’re not together, there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart… I’ll always be with you.”
Though lengthy, the post offered a simple message: that Thackray’s short life was filled with happiness despite her struggle with the vicious disease that caused her to miss out on major life milestones and plans.
“I LOVED my life. Everything I had achieved was what I wanted. I loved my job, my fiancé, my family, my friends and my dog, and the house we were going to buy and the future we were making for ourselves,” Thackray wrote.
“So thank you everyone for making my life so magical. Remember what I said about enjoying the little things.”
Thackray ended her final message to her fiancé, with whom she celebrated her engagement to just one month earlier.
“And lastly to my dear, beautiful Tom, I love you and always will. Thank you for supporting me and bringing so much love and happiness into my life. Go enjoy your life now, you deserve it,” she wrote.
Thackray announced her cancer battle in a July post, sharing that she had undergone liver resection and gallbladder surgery.
She requested book and television recommendations as she recovered, and included pictures of herself in a hospital bed with the support of her fiancé Tom.
Cholangiocarcinoma is a rare form of cancer that on average affects fewer than 6 in 100,000 people around the world, according to the National Cancer Institute.
There is no cure for the disease, which Thackray called “horrid” and “cruel.”
How the young woman contracted the disease is a mystery — she emphasized she was a very healthy and active individual whose disease “was not caused by anything in my control.”
Thackray expressed hope that research on the disease makes leaps and bounds following her death so “so that more lives can be saved.”
