THIS MOM'S BACK- TO- SCHOOL PHOTO IS HEARTBREAKING

Last year, Julie Apicella of Walsoken, England, like so many mothers across the country, took a photo of her beautiful little girl, Emily, all dressed up to go to school. This year, she shared the photo side by side with the same setting, but an empty space.

In December 2015, 8-year-old Emily passed away, having succumbed to a three-year battle with a type of kidney cancer known as Wilms' tumor.

Apicella posted the side-by-side photos on Facebook on September 7, as a powerful depiction of how it feels to live without her.

"School photo time — obviously someone very special missing - my daughter Emily. Imagine if your school photo this year is the LAST you will ever be able to take and will just be a memory to remember," she wrote in the caption.

She asked all of her friends to change their profile pics to a gold ribbon – the international symbol for childhood cancer – to raise awareness about this horrible disease.

"This could be your reality in the future," she wrote." One in 285 children will get a cancer diagnoses. Raising awareness of
symptoms and that childhood cancer is not rare is the first hurdle to
jump."

 

Within a week, Apicella's post was shared over 8,000 times, eliciting hundreds of gold ribbons. For the bereaved mother, it is so important for the gold ribbon to become as well-recognized as the pink ribbon, because building awareness can pave the way for better treatments and greater funding. 

"My daughter ran out of options and we as a family had to watch as her cancer took over her body with nothing to try to cure her and that is tragic," Apicella told The Huffington Post. 

"A parent shouldn't bury their child."