ATLANTA — It’s been three months since the passing of Anna “Chickadee” Cardwell, 28, who had been battling stage 4 cancer, and her mother is now giving so insight into when she knew her daughter’s life was coming to an end.
The family decided to take one last trip with Chickadee to Gatlinburg, Tennessee the last week of November.
“She’s just going through the emotions like anyone would be [with] cancer,” Mama June Shannon said at the time. “We’re going through emotions as a family. Mentally it’s always on my mind.”
Mama June looking back on the trip, there were signs her daughter’s time on this Earth was coming to an end.
“I kind of knew something was up when we was in and out the last couple of days, but we adored our time,” Shannon told People Magazine.
When they got back home, Shannon said Chickadee kept saying she was starting to “transition.”
“Once she came back here and she [had] seen the nurses and all of that, they was just telling us that she was starting to transition, which I just thought it was because she was out from the trip and stuff like that. But no, it really was she was just transitioning,” Shannon said.
While Chickadee’s diagnosis and ultimate death was incredibly hard on the family made famous from Reality TV, Mama June said the experience has made all of them much closer.
“We did get closer during that. Because that’s really what Anna kept repeating, ‘I want to spend more time with family. I want to spend more time together,’” she said. “We came together and made that happen.”
Shannon said her husband has been “a very big support.”
“I tell a lot of people he didn’t have to do what he [has] done. But me and him, we took Anna to every treatment. He was mainly the one helping get the kids back and forward to school, stuff like that,” Shannon said. “He was a great support. My kids call him.”