Heartbreaking Photo Of 8-Year-Old Girl Embracing Her Mother For The Last Time Before Her Death

Kiss goodbye: Eight-year-old Roxy Fenn embraces her mother Vicky days before she lost her battle with breast cancer.

The schoolgirl lost her father Bob in 2015 when she was just five

This heart-wrenching photo captures the moment an eight-year-old girl kissed her mother goodbye days before she lost her battle with cancer.

Schoolgirl Roxy is seen tenderly embracing mother Vicky Fenn, 38, of Benfleet,, Essex, in the hospice where she spent her final days before succumbing to the disease last Wednesday.

Vicky was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in 2016, a year after her partner Bob, Roxy’s father, died in his sleep aged 55. At the time Roxy was just five years old.

Roxy will now live with Vicky’s sister Teresa, 41, and her family in Cambridgeshire. 

Speaking to FEMAIL, Teresa said her niece was being ‘very brave’ in coping with the death of her mother. 

She said: ‘It’s a completely new life for her, a new home, new family, new school. But she is being very brave.’

Vicky discovered the lump in her breast in July 2016, almost a year to the day after Bob died following several problems with his heart and triple bypass surgery.

She was initially told her invasive lobular breast cancer, most common in pre-menopausal women, was curable. But in May 2017 she was told she had just two years to live.

The devoted mother spoke before her death of her heartache at the knowledge she would leave her child an orphan.

Speaking to the Daily Mirror following her diagnosis, she said: ‘Roxy’s already lost a parent. I’ve not even lost a parent. 

‘And now she’s facing the prospect of losing both her mummy and daddy. I’m not the unlucky one, she is.

‘My dad too, he’s heartbroken. It’s not the way round it’s supposed to happen for him. He wanted me to outlive him, not the other way around.’  

Determined to give her daughter memories to treasure, Vicky dedicated the last two years of her life to making the most of the time she had with her daughter. 

The pair went on a holiday to Florida and Vicky began making a ‘memory box’ filled with cards and keepsakes for her daughter to open on important milestones. 

‘I’m buying birthdays, engagement and wedding cards,’ Vicky said in February. ‘She’ll have a big box, and it will say when she can open each one. I want to write her letters, too. I want her to know I’m always there.’ 

With the help of her family, Vicky also started a petition to have the age of mandatory breast cancer screenings lowered to 25. 

Launching the online petition, which already has 10,000 signatures, she wrote: ‘Because of my age, I never dreamt I’d have breast cancer. Cancer does not discriminate! Help our kids get diagnosed quicker to prevent early death.’

Mother-of-two Teresa said it was her sister’s hope that the petition would garner the 100,000 signatures needed to be heard before Parliament.  

She said Vicky did not want any other child to lose their mother like Roxy had done. 

Speaking on her sister’s strength, Teresa added: ‘Throughout the last two years, even after Bob died, she never once said “poor me”. It was all about what’s best for Roxy.’

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