Often tweets go viral on Twitter for their silliness, or hilarity, or clear ability to outline important issues — but one devastating tweet is going viral this week for bringing every person who reads it to tears.
College freshman Hannah Summers posted a letter her mother wrote her before she passed away, urging those who read it to appreciate their parents while they are still alive.
“Before my mom passed she wrote us all letters,” she tweeted, “this is mine. please hug your parents a little closer and never take them for granted because you never know when you could lose them. I love you momma.”
The letter itself starts with a gut-punch: “If you are reading this then the surgery did not go well.”
Her mom then gives her daughter advice to heed in the coming years.
“Study hard in school,” she writes, “don’t worry about a job. If you want to work in the summer fine but you need to concentrate on school. Be patient with dad, this is going to be hard on him and he will need time. You both need to lean on each other and talk a lot.”
She also urges her daughter to “use your common sense on things like not going anywhere by yourself and having an emergency kit in your car in the winter.”
The letter is a full page single-spaced, and ends with the powerful message: “Enjoy life and live each day as if it is your last.”
before my mom passed she wrote us all letters. this is mine. please hug your parents a little closer and never take them for granted because you never know when you could lose them. I love you momma. 💗 pic.twitter.com/e2TZtg92bK
— hannah summers (@_hannahsummers) November 1, 2017
The tweet and accompanying letter has amassed 300,000 likes and 100,000 retweets, and many people who have lost their own mothers are replying with their own stories of loss and sending Hannah all their love.
I am so very sorry. It is so hard. I have been motherless for 9 days and still doesn’t feel real. Big hugs to you and your sister. ❤️
— Elizabeth Wash Your Hands Thorp (@ElizabethEThorp) November 3, 2017
I lost my mom 9 years ago when I was pregnant with my second child. It took 7 years b4 I could say it w/o crying. I’m very sorry for ur loss
— Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 (@jennycohn1) November 3, 2017
“I wasn’t going to share the letter at first but the more I read it the more I felt like I had to,” she told Buzzfeed. “It perfectly shows the kind of person my mom was, so loving and caring and always worried about others more than herself. I can’t even imagine how hard it was for her to write the letter, but she knew it was something that we would need in order to get some type of closure.”
