An Aberdeen mum has paid tribute to her 34-year-old daughter, who lost her battle with breast cancer earlier this year.
Lauren Brown passed away in January after a five-year battle with the illness, leaving behind two sons, 11-year-old Harris and Buddy, aged eight.
Lauren’s mum Simone Bjorkelund, 55, spoke about her daughter’s cancer battle after being diagnosed at the age of 30.
“She had a lot of different chemos and radiotherapy over the last five years, but they sort of ran out of treatment to give her and she sadly passed away on January 5 this year.”
After her passing, £1,600 was raised at Lauren’s funeral, with £1,000 of this being donated to cancer charity Maggie’s Aberdeen and the remaining £600 to hospice Roxburghe House, where she was admitted to on Boxing Day.
Simone’s grandsons both got pictured with Maggie’s staff when donating the cheque to them and she says raising this money was “reassuring”, as these organisations helped her daughter during her cancer battle.
Lauren ‘lived for her boys’
She added: “There’s a lot of loved people out there and some people are going to get recognised, so we just wanted to do something for a good cause, especially like Roxburghe House, who haven’t got a lot of money and they depend on charity for families.”
Continuing on the theme of charity, Simone and Lauren’s family and friends took part in Cancer Research’s Race for Life at Aberdeen beach on Sunday, in which they completed the 5k run in memory of the Robert Gordon University worker.
Harris and Buddy were also at the race, with their grandmother – who is now bringing the boys up with Lauren’s stepdad Gary – telling The P&J that she “lived for her boys”.
Simone added: “She was just such an amazing, amazing strong young woman, what she went through with appointments and everything, I just can’t praise her enough, she’s just amazing.
“Lauren looked after the boys, took them to school, took them to activities and did an amazing job, while going through her treatment at the same time. She was remarkable.”
Lauren worked part-time during illness
And Lauren, who worked looking after student nurses at RGU for around 11/12 years, had to shield during Covid-19 due to her immune system being lower due to her cancer diagnosis, and despite this, still managed to work from home part-time.
Discussing how her grandsons have coped with their mum’s untimely passing, Simone described them as being “brilliant” and “excellent”.
She added: “They’ve been absolutely amazing, people keep saying the kids have been resilient because their mum did an amazing job bringing them up going through all her treatment and she’s just an absolute superhero.”
Simone hopes that the money raised through Race for Life will help to diagnose cancer earlier, as she says “there’s so much young people getting it”.
Rather than women having to wait until they are 50 to get a breast screening (mammogram), she feels it should be done at a younger age, “maybe at 30”.
“In the long run, if people could be diagnosed earlier, they would get treated earlier and they wouldn’t have to go through what Lauren went through,” she told The P&J.
‘Thank you to everyone that’s been involved in Lauren’s life’
Thanking everyone for their help and support, Simone said: “I’d like to say a thank you to everyone that’s been involved in Lauren’s life and all the help family, friends, work colleagues of mine and Lauren’s friends have given us.
“They’ve been there to help us and support us with the boys, it’s been just phenomenal, they’ve been absolutely great.”
“Myself and Gary are so proud of Lauren and Harris and Buddy. They are such a credit to her.”
Conversation