Day 14 belongs to Sheryl Bronsink — three diagnoses, sixteen years, and a family who still asks themselves what she would do.
“I carry her memory with me every day. And I always think, ‘what would my mom do.'”
— Sheryl’s daughter
Listen to Sheryl’s dedication
The shirt off her back
We have to start with the bees.
Years ago, Sheryl’s daughter stumbled straight into a bee’s nest. She did what any of us would do — tore her shirt off and ran around the yard screaming, covered in bees.
So her mom gave her the shirt off her back. Literally. Took it off and handed it over. Her daughter describes her as the kindest, most caring person who would give anyone the shirt off her back, and she has the receipts.
The grandma she was
Sheryl was grandma to two boys, six years apart. Between her bouts with cancer, she took care of them while their parents worked. She and her husband picked them up from school every single day.
They built things out of Legos. They watched movies. She baked the older boy’s favorite chocolate chip cookie bars. And for the younger one, she hand-sewed a Creature From the Black Lagoon costume — back before you could order one online.
She was a great listener who gave the best advice. Her daughter says she radiated love, and made everyone around her feel heard and welcome.
Three times
2001. Sheryl was 49. She found out right before her daughter’s wedding — and she waited. Waited on the lumpectomy, waited to start radiation, until after the wedding was over. Her grandson had just turned five, and having him around every day helped her through it.
About five years later. A routine mammogram found it again, in the other breast. Another lumpectomy, more radiation, and she was cancer free a second time. By then the boys were 10 and 4, and no matter how tired or sore she felt, she loved every minute with them.
She’d also been living with lupus since her mid-forties. It flared up now and then just to remind her it was there. Her daughter says she never let it get her down — always a smile, always a kind word.
Just after she turned 65. Things felt off. Her husband took her in, and scans that same day brought the third diagnosis. This time it had reached her brain — around thirty tumors.
The last year
She didn’t fold. Her daughter says she kept a positive attitude and attacked those tumors head on, because she wanted to stick around for her family.
Gamma radiation in the spring of 2017 seemed to shrink them. Then a later scan put the count near sixty. She did it again. Her doctors said they’d keep going as many times as it took — but her lupus flared that year too, and her body couldn’t take it.
She fought for almost a year. Sheryl passed away on November 12, 2017, a little over a month short of her 66th birthday.
What her daughter carries
“While my mom did eventually lose her fight with cancer, she was the strongest person I have ever known and an inspiration in more ways than I can count. I became a grandma for the first time last year and it has really made me remember all the special moments I had with my mom.”
Thank you for letting us tell your mom’s story. Rest in peace, Sheryl. Fourteen miles down, and this one is yours.
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