For Charlotte resident Pamela Curry and her sons, 9-year-old Elisha and 5-year-old Elian, the holidays used to look very different.
On Christmas Eve, Curry and her mom would stay up late into the night, chatting and wrapping presents. They’d decorate the house, toast one another — Curry with coffee and her mom with ginger ale — and give a prayer of thanks that they could celebrate Christmas together.
Curry would keep wrapping while her mom prepared a feast for the next day. “That was the best food in the world,” she told The Charlotte Observer, reminiscing about the annual meal that included turkey, macaroni salad, collard greens and Curry’s favorite — homemade cornbread and turkey giblet dressing.
But about three years ago, everything changed.
In the span of a few months, Curry lost her oldest son’s father to a heart attack and her beloved mother fell gravely ill. Ten days after burying her mother, Curry was diagnosed with HER2 metastatic breast cancer. She was unable to return to her longtime job as a bus driver for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools .