A Dying Mother Wrote Her Children Letters, Leaving a Gift of Love for Years

Jacqueline Zinn passed away in 2013 from brain cancer and spent the previous 18 months fighting as hard as she could, enduring surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. When she knew that she only had precious weeks left Jacquie decided to think of her four children and what they would need when she was gone.

Her husband Doug said that Jacquie wanted to be “present with her kids” at special milestones in their life, even after her death, so she wrote letters to be opened by the children when those times came. One was for each of them to be opened immediately after her death to help with the crushing grief, the second at college graduation, and the third at their wedding. This way they could still feel their mother’s love at these emotional moments.

The idea that a mother facing her own early demise would focus beyond her death, to want to cushion the blow of it to her offspring, is simply amazing. When a normal person may easily deny their mortality, thinking they had plenty of time to write a will or make an estate plan, Jacqueline Zinn knew her days were numbered. Yet she did not fall into depression or denial; instead, she faced it with a determination and grace that we can all admire.

See Steven Petrow, A Dying Mother Wrote Her Children Letters, Leaving a Gift of Love for Years, Washington Post, September 2, 2018.

Special thanks to Naomi Cahn (Harold H. Greene Professor of Law, George Washington University School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.