Mama June Shannon is opening up about how the family keeps Anna’s memory alive.
And there’s a very physical component to the family’s mourning process.
It has been one year since the death of Mama June’s daughter, Anna Cardwell.
Amidst their grief, the family brings her ashes with them whenever they leave the house.
Mama June previously explained how the family keeps Anna with them
Just over a week ahead of the one-year anniversary of Anna Cardwell’s tragic passing, June Shannon discussed how the family treats her late eldest daughter’s ashes.
Some families scatter ashes in nature — sometimes, illegally. Other families keep ashes in funerary urns at home. Sadly, some loved ones end up in unlabeled plastic containers in a cabinet.
As Mama June explained in her Facebook post, she and other family bring Anna’s cremains with them on errands.
Speaking to People, Mama June is now elaborating on how the family is treating Anna’s ashes.
“For me, personally, taking her urn everywhere with us, and I’m talking about the whole urn,” she detailed.
“People might think I’m crazy,” June acknowledged. “But we’re talking about the whole urn. We’re not talking about the little baby urn.”
‘We don’t fly with the big urn’
Anna Cardwell’s battle against stage 4 adrenal carcinoma lasted only 10 months. She passed away in December of 2023, leaving behind her two daughters and grieving family.
“We do all wear jewelry [with her ashes] that we have,” Mama June specified. “But the big urn, if we’re driving somewhere, she goes with us.”
She did note one major exception: “Now, do we fly with her? No,” she said. “But we fly with her on jewelry. We don’t fly with the big urn.”
“If we’re flying, no, she’s not left in the house,” June assured.
“What we normally do is we take her in the car, we’ll leave her in the car parked at a parking lot,” she explained. “And then she stays there for a week.”
June continued: “because we don’t want to fly with her and then have her taken away. We just don’t want to take that risk.”
“We drove to Colorado, she went to Alabama, she’s going to South Carolina this weekend,” June rattled off. “So just keeping that part like, ‘Okay, Anna’s in the car.’”
Notably, Alana Thompson is attending college in Colorado.
“Or we went to Justin’s momma this past week in Alabama and I was like, ‘Well, shoot, we brought Anna here,” she added as an example.
Mama June shared the one wish of Anna’s that they did not fulfill
Explaining that Anna Cardwell “loved being in the spotlight,” she admitted that “if it [had been] up to her, we would’ve streamed her funeral.”
June elaborated: “That’s what she wanted and we [were] like, ‘No, no.’ That was the only wish we did not give her when she passed away.”
She shared that her hope is that the memory of Anna will live on in fans as it has with the family.