In Oklahoma, a 28-year-old single mom is spending what may be her final weeks doing something most people put off for decades: planning her own funeral and trying to secure a financial cushion for her kids. Instead of bucket lists and last trips, Kaylin Gawf is pricing caskets, talking through burial details, and refreshing a fundraiser page that could shape her children’s future. Her story is raw and unfair, but it is also a clear-eyed look at what love looks like when time is running out.
Doctors have told Kaylin she has only weeks left after terminal breast cancer spread through her body, and she has decided that whatever energy she has left will go toward her 9-year-old and 6-year-old. While friends and strangers rally online, she is the one setting the tone, talking openly about death so her kids will not be left with chaos on top of grief. It is the kind of emotional heavy lifting no parent wants, yet she is doing it anyway.
The diagnosis that changed everything
Kaylin Gawf is 28, a single mother from Oklahoma, and she has been told she has only about six weeks to live after a brutal cancer journey that started with breast cancer and spread to her lungs, bones, lymph nodes, and eventually her brain. In interviews, she has described how the disease kept advancing despite treatment, until doctors finally told her there was nothing more they could do and that her time with her family and her two kids, ages 9 and 6, would be painfully short. One report notes that she was explicitly warned she had “only weeks left to spend with her family and her two kids,” a timeline that has turned every school pickup and bedtime routine into something she is quietly counting.
That reality has hit her extended family just as hard. Relatives have spoken about how “there’s just not enough time” to process what is happening, let alone fix it, and how “it’s just heartbreaking” to watch a young mother try to cram a lifetime of parenting into a handful of weeks. Coverage of her story has emphasized that she is facing terminal breast cancer that has spread to her brain, with one detailed account explaining that the cancer moved from her breast to her lungs, bones, and lymph nodes before doctors found it in her head, leaving her with limited treatment options and a devastating prognosis linked to metastatic disease.
Planning a funeral and a future she will not see
Once it became clear that time was short, Kaylin shifted into a kind of crisis planning mode that most people never imagine doing for themselves at 28. She has talked about how she is arranging her own funeral so her family will not have to scramble or argue over details while they are grieving, a decision that has her picking out everything from service plans to burial preferences. In one account, she explains that she is “so heartbroken” to be doing this, but she wants to spare her kids and relatives the added stress of unexpected costs and unanswered questions when she is gone, a sentiment echoed in coverage that describes her as a single mom with trying to take care of everything in advance.
At the same time, she is trying to think beyond the funeral to the years she will miss. Kaylin has launched a fundraiser that is meant to cover her own burial expenses and then roll over into support for her children, a kind of financial bridge for rent, school clothes, and the everyday costs of raising two kids without their mother. One detailed profile notes that she set up a GoFundMe so that donations can first pay for her funeral and then help provide for her son and daughter after she is gone, while another report describes how she has now created a campaign that will both cover her own funeral expenses and provide financial help for her kids as they grow up, capturing the way she is trying to plan for a future she will never see with her own eyes.
Community help, quiet fears, and the weight on other moms
Kaylin’s story has spread far beyond Oklahoma, in part because it taps into a fear many parents carry but rarely say out loud: what happens to the kids if something happens to me. As her prognosis became public, local and national coverage highlighted how she is a “single mother with only weeks to live” who is using those weeks to plan and to ask for help, not for herself, but for her children. One station described how she was told she had six weeks to live and is now using that time to organize her own arrangements and raise money for her kids, while another report quoted family members saying, “So, it’s just heartbreaking,” as they watched her juggle medical appointments with funeral planning and fundraising for her two children.
Her situation has also thrown a spotlight on how fragile life can be for single parents who do not have a financial safety net. Reports describe her as a “single mother with only weeks to live” who has turned to online fundraising to cover basic end-of-life costs and long term support for her kids, a reality that mirrors countless other families who quietly set up campaigns when illness hits. One story notes that she was told she had six weeks to live and that there was simply not enough time to prepare in any traditional sense, so she is relying on community generosity and the reach of social media to fill the gap, with coverage pointing to her as a single mother who is doing everything she can in the time she has left and another account emphasizing that she was told she had six weeks to live and is now racing that clock, as described in a report that details how she was told there was so little time.
Her story also lands alongside other fundraisers for parents in similar situations, including campaigns like one that asks for help for “Erika and her children with funeral expenses,” where another family is trying to cover burial costs and future needs through a GoFundMe page. Together, these efforts paint a picture of how often young parents facing terminal illness are forced to become their own financial planners, event coordinators, and advocates while they are also patients and caregivers. For Kaylin, the heartbreak sits right next to a kind of stubborn practicality: she cannot change the diagnosis, but she can try to make sure that when her kids look back, they see a mom who did everything she could, right up to the very end.
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