Help Shannon fly home to say goodbye to her mother

My name is Shannon. I moved to England in 2007; I got married, had two kids, and ended up settling in England. My marriage didn’t work out, and I tried to move back but the courts wouldn’t let me, because my ex-husband is actually a super father even though he and I didn’t work out. I eventually met someone else and had another child a couple of years ago. That relationship was very different and I had no support. I was due to give birth alone, but in the end, I didn’t have to, because my mother came to be with me. She was the first person in the world to see my daughter, Rose, and without my mom’s help during that dark period of my life, I don’t know where I’d be.

Other than my kids, I have no family in England. My eldest daughter is 13 and my son is 11; he is level 2 autistic. One of his favorite things to do is call people in the family and get to know them, and until recently he was regularly conversing with my mother, Lisa, who my kids affectionately call “Nana”.

My mom has always had an amazing bond with all of her 8 grandchildren. In September, she started having problems speaking and writing. By October, she had been taken to the hospital and had her first emergency brain surgery. They found an abscess that had occurred due to a tooth infection that had travelled into her brain; it was removed and she was placed on antibiotics and sent home. We thought she would eventually recover and things looked positive; her staples were removed, her hair started growing back, and her speech began to improve for a short time. But just as we thought she was on the mend, she suddenly began having terrible mood swings, which we thought might be caused by the steroids they’d given her to stop her from having seizures after the brain surgery. On Black Friday, the day after a very pleasant Thanksgiving, she became extremely hostile and had to be taken back to the hospital by the police, who had strapped her to a gurney. Another brain surgery soon commenced, then an MRI. These investigations revealed a devastating fact that had been missed up until then—which is that mom had an aggressive, debilitating brain tumor that had been hidden by the abscess.

My mom has a glioblastoma, and she is dying. And I am in England, and I need to go home to see her one last time. This is not a comfortable or “nice” thing to do—ask people for help, beg them to share their hard-earned money, especially at Christmastime. But I don’t have the money. I’ve just spent most of the bill money on passport renewals (I thought I would have more time, in the future, to complete this task… if only!) and I am already behind on my gas and electric. I’ve been out of work since before Rose was born. So I have no money to go abroad. But go abroad, I must.

I know it’s Christmas. And if you can’t afford to help me, I understand completely. But I have to try. Because this is going to be my last Christmas with my mother. And I haven’t even said anything about the wonderful person she is—she’s my best friend. She always laughs at my jokes, she listens to my problems. She taught me how to use a spoon. She showed me how to do laundry. She taught me songs and cooked meals for me every day of my childhood, even though she hated to cook. My mom is brilliant—she was always reading books. She is also the most caring person I know—she was a nurse for forty years. She took care of everyone else all of her life, and now she is having to be taken care of. I just want to get home to her and take care of her before she goes, and say goodbye. I need to get from England to North Port, Florida with my three kids. Please, please help me.