Savannah Inthalangsy and her mother had a special tradition. It started on Savannah’s first day of high school.
After school, they would go grab some ice cream and snap a photo together.
They took a similar photo on Savannah’s last day as a freshman at John Horn High School and again on the first and last day of her sophomore and junior year.
“We were really close. She didn’t like that I called her my best friend,” Savannah told FOX 4. “She would always say ‘We’re not friends because I’m your mom.’ But I called her my best friend.”
The mother-daughter duo looked overjoyed in the first photos of them enjoying colorful looking ice cream cones. In the next photo, mom opted for a Sonic shake.
During sophomore year, the ladies switched it up and headed to Dairy Queen for some “Blizzards.”
They enjoyed a frozen green treat during Savannah’s junior year. But there was something else that was different about these photos.
Savannah’s mom was missing her hair in the photo of her last day of school as a junior. It’s a common side effect of chemotherapy that is used to treat cancer.
Her mom had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer when Savannah was in the sixth grade.
She battled cancer for quite a long time and outlived her original prognosis. By the time they took their traditional ice cream photo on Savannah’s first day of school a senior, mom’s hair started to grow back.
Unfortunately, her mom ended up passing away in December.
“On December 19th, she had a brain aneurysm,” Savannah said. “It was kind of a combination of that and ovarian cancer that she went into a coma. And then she passed away.”
Savannah still wanted to make sure she upheld their photo tradition on the last day of her senior year.
So, she went to Starbucks to grab her mom’s favorite drink and she posed for a photo at her mother’s grave.
The strength she exhibited is extremely admirable.
“I wanted to be strong for her because she was strong for me the whole time,” Savannah said.
Savannah posted all of the photos on Twitter, including the last one. Her tweet ended up going viral and was retweeted more than 126,000 times and was liked more than 606,000 times.
Many have reached out to her sharing stories about their own parents.
“The replies have me crying because I never noticed our close bond showed through like this and I’m so glad it did,” she said.
It made Savannah feel a little bit better about the fact that her mom won’t be physically there for her graduation.
Savannah says she plans to follow her mother’s footsteps to become an educator.
“I’m glad she’s proud of me,” Savannah said. “I can feel she’s proud of me.”
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