Mama June reveals unique way she honors late daughter Anna ‘Chickadee’ Cardwell after cancer death

Mama June has revealed the striking way she is honoring her late daughter Anna ‘Chickadee’ Cardwell, who succumbed to cancer.

Chickadee died exactly one year ago this Monday, after previously revealing she suffered from an adrenal carcinoma that progressed to stage 4.

June took in Chickadee’s eldest daughter Kaitlyn, 12, and won full custody of her after a months-long court battle.

Now June has shared that she’s ‘just keeping her alive’ [best as] we can do that” and “let Kaitlyn know mommy loved her.”

She revealed that one way to hold on to Chickadee’s memory is, “For me personally, taking her urn everywhere, and I’m talking about the whole urn.”

The 45-year-old added: ‘People may think I’m crazy, but we’re talking about the whole urn. We’re not talking about the little baby urn,” via People.

June has three surviving daughters: Jessica “Chubbs” Shannon, 28, Lauryn “Pumpkin” Efird, 24, and Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson, 19.

She is currently married to one Justin Stroud, who she met in rehab in 2021 after battling an addiction to crack cocaine.

‘We all wear jewelry [with her ashes] that we have, but the large urn, when we drive somewhere, she comes with us. Are we flying with her now? No. But we fly with her on jewelry. We don’t fly the big urn,” June said.

“If we fly, no, she won’t stay in the house. What we normally do is we take her in the car, we leave her in the car parked in a parking lot and then she stays there for a week because we don’t want to fly with her and then have her taken away. We just don’t want to take that risk,” she explained.

Chickadee “definitely” accompanies June in the car, her mother noted. “We drove to Colorado, she went to Alabama, she’s going to South Carolina this weekend. So just keep that part like, “Okay, Anna’s in the car.” Or we went to Justin’s mom in Alabama this past week and I was like, “Well, shoot, we brought Anna here.”

June revealed that “we all went to Disney and we took her,” adding that traveling with Chickadee’s ashes was one of the “little things.” Keep the group chat, keep her on Pumpkin’s [Bluetooth car] radio, that kind of thing.’

Chickadee’s harrowing final decline from cancer was filmed for the family’s WEtv reality show Mama June: Family Crisis.

She allowed cameras to follow her into her final hours, but the show declined to cover her death or funeral out of respect for the family’s grief.

Chickadee is survived by her husband Eldridge Toney and two daughters: Kylee, nine, by her ex-husband Michael Cardwell, and Kaitlyn, 12, by a previous relationship

Chickadee’s harrowing final decline from cancer was filmed for the TLC family reality show Mama June: Family Crisis

Chickadee is survived by her husband Eldridge Toney and two daughters: Kylee, nine, by her ex-husband Michael Cardwell, and Kaitlyn, 12, by a previous relationship.

Before she died, Chickadee agreed to her mother taking Kaitlyn in, but this year June had to fight a legal battle over the issue against Michael, who wanted custody of both Kaitlyn and his biological daughter Kylee.

June was determined to retain custody of Kaitlyn, saying, “Anna wanted Kaitlyn to stay with her biological family, and I’m going to fight until my dying breath until I have no fight left in me to make sure that’s the case. it works.’

In September of this year, June emerged victorious in her legal battle with Michael when a Georgia judge granted her full custody of Kaitlyn.