Editor’s note: To donate to Latasha Johnson and her children, the subjects of today’s Reindeer Gang fundraiser feature — the Telegraph’s annual profiles of people and families in need at Christmas — call Campus Clubs in Macon at 742-7794.
Latasha Johnson and her three children were in their living room one day last week. They were on the sofa, bunched up close for the photograph with this article. Shadows from the sun, which was setting down across Fifth Avenue and Interstate 75 outside their windows, fell across their faces.
A reporter there asking about Johnson’s struggles with breast cancer and how, with her unable to work, she was coping as the holidays approached.
“This has been a lot,” said Johnson, 36, a native New Yorker who moved south to Macon about four years ago.
Within a year, while she was pregnant with her youngest child, Johnson was diagnosed with breast cancer that has spread to her liver and brain. Though her prognosis is terminal, Johnson said, “I just put that in the back of my mind. ... I just go about my business like it ain’t nothing, trying not to think of negative.”
Every three weeks she has chemotherapy.
When she was younger and living in New York City, she worked as a home health aide taking care of the elderly. After moving to Macon in 2013 because she had family here, and the cost of living wasn’t so high, she was a school bus monitor and had a job sorting mail.
Now she and her children live off Social Security. Johnson is legally disabled and can’t afford to buy much. She has had four operations in the past year, including one to remove brain tumors. Her vision and her balance are sometimes off. She hasn’t been able to work since January.
Sitting on their couch last week, Johnson’s daughter, Carla Gilmore, who is 9, spoke candidly of her mother’s illness.
“She said she hopes she can live as long as she can to watch us grow up,” Carla, who wants a bicycle for Christmas and maybe some toys, said. “I was so proud when she said that. I was crying. That was the most grateful thing she had ever said.”
Carla’s 3-year-old sister, Tiyanna, roared through the room on a battery-powered buggy. Tiyanna likes Minnie Mouse and Doc McStuffins toys.
Raleak Gilmore, Johnson’s oldest child, is 17. He is on track to graduate from Central High School next spring. He likes Xbox games and could use some clothes for Christmas.
Asked what he might want his mother to know about how he feels about all she she is going through, Raleak said, “I love you. ... You always made sure me and my siblings were OK.”
Later, as she sat, her children surrounding her, Johnson, with the glint of a tear in her eye, said, “I just want them to be the best they can be.”
Joe Kovac Jr.: 478-744-4397, @joekovacjr
This story was originally published November 24, 2017 1:36 PM.