She Lost Her Mother at Age 11 and Taught Oprah a Lesson She Never Forgot

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:01)
This is Tom and his children, Zach and Kate. Tom lost his beloved wife Kathleen three months ago. Do you have letters that your mom wrote?

**Kate** (0:10)
I'm confident in the kind of wonderful woman you will become. With this knowledge, I have grown to actually be able to face death with a sense of peace. You have helped me get there because I know you'll be all right.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:25)
At the end of the show, I asked 11-year-old Kate, what was her favorite memory?

**Kate** (0:29)
About a week before she died, before she went into the hospital, I was in their room and sleeping and I said, Mom, would you wake me up if you go downstairs to eat a bowl of cereal? She said, yeah. So at 2 o'clock in the morning, we both went down and we ate. Cheerios? Yeah.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:47)
In the end, what matters the most to the children, I believe, as Kate so eloquently shared with us, are the moment in the time. And it's not the jackets in the great big games and the vacations, but it's the time she spent with her mom eating a bowl of Cheerios.
Kate is now married and a mother of two daughters. Hi, Kate.

**Kate** (1:07)
Hi, Oprah.

**Oprah Winfrey** (1:11)
Hey there. Thank you for spending time with us here on The Oprah Podcast. Over 25 years of The Oprah Winfrey Show, we did it all, it all, makeovers.
Incredible reunions, giveaways, celebrity conversations. But more often than not, I will tell you, for me, the deeper aha moments came from everyday folks who just were there to share their stories on the show. One of the most memorable for me was an 11-year-old girl named Kate, who sat in the front row of our audience with her brother Zach and her father Tom, just a few months after they had lost their mother Kathleen to cancer. And I'll catch up with Kate later in the podcast, but I've spoken with Kate and Zach many times over the years. Here's a look at the very first time we met.
This is Tom and his children, Zach and Kate. Tom lost his beloved wife Kathleen just three months ago from lung cancer. Didn't smoke. Kathleen tried to pack a lifetime of experiences into one short year. And Tom says she died peacefully after passing along some valuable lessons. She wanted to have a good death, correct?

**Tom** (2:27)
Immediately after the unconceivable news, the diagnosis, we went into action in the way in which we coped with all other traumas before that, which was optimism and hope and focus on overcoming the somewhat insurmountable odds.
And that's the sort of energy we brought to dealing with it initially. But it turns out that that energy, sort of stiff arms, as Mitch, you said, stiff arms, what is really going on, which is the fears of the unimaginable. And once we understood that that's really what we needed to embrace, we got help, professional help, support at the Cancer Wellness Center. What we came to understand is that instead of coping with the fears, we had to wade into them, we had to face them.
And once we were able to learn how to do that, we became free of them. And it meant having conversations that were indescribable. But we had them, the four of us, the kids and Kathleen and I, we talked about funerals.

**Oprah Winfrey** (3:29)
Were you guys told in the beginning, how soon were you told that your mom had lung cancer?

**Zach** (3:34)
The day. The day? Yeah.

**Tom** (3:36)
Yeah. They were in on it from the very beginning.
And because we were able to open it up to the unimaginable fears, they didn't drive us any longer. They didn't control us. And we became free of fear and allowed us to be open to living in the moment. That was our secret to living in the moment is facing our fears and getting rid of them. And once we did, it became this fantastic cycle because it opened us up to pleasure and joy and love in ways that the four of us had never known. And it radiated among our family, our friends, our community.

**Oprah Winfrey** (4:15)
Really?

**Tom** (4:16)
Yeah, really.

**Oprah Winfrey** (4:19)
So kids, you have letters that your mom wrote?

**Zach** (4:21)
Yeah.
I received this about, I don't know, a week after my mom died. And this is just a little part of it.
Thirteen-year-old boys don't need their moms too much, but they definitely need them from time to time. I so desperately wish I could be there for you, in body, not just in spirit. Fortunately for me, I won't have to bear the indignity of ever losing a tickle torture to you, which no doubt would have happened in the near future. More seriously, though, while I think about your life without me, while it brings me sadness, it also brings me pride. You have developed such tremendous qualities in your brief life on earth that I am enormously gratified as I imagine you navigating your way even without me.