Ananda Lewis had one dying wish before her heartbreaking passing.
Lakshmi Emory, Lewis’ sister, said that the former MTV video jockey hoped to live long enough to make it to her 14-year-old son Langston’s middle school graduation day.
“Her wish was to live to his graduation day,” Emory told Entertainment Tonight on Thursday, “and she did exactly that.”
Lewis died on Wednesday, June 11, at the age of 52. Her son, whom she had with Will Smith’s brother, Harry Smith, in 2011, graduated from middle school later that same day.
Although Lewis’ cause of death has not been revealed, she passed away following a lengthy battle with breast cancer.
Her sister announced the devastating news in a short Facebook post shared Wednesday afternoon.
“She’s free, and in His heavenly arms,” Emory wrote alongside a black-and-white photo of her late sister. “Lord, rest her soul.”
“She was my stubborn little sister who shone brightly, loved fiercely and was my number one cheerleader,” Emery added in a second Facebook post shared Thursday. “Hard/headed and tender-hearted…smart as a whip…we finished each other’s sentences.”
“I had her back and she had mine,” Emory continued. “There are no words to express the depth of the devastation I feel. My life will never be the same, without her. Rest now.”
Lewis first announced that she was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer in an Instagram video shared in October 2020.
While Lewis revealed that she had been diagnosed almost two years earlier, she also insisted that she had “no intention” of leaving her son, friends and other family members behind despite the shocking diagnosis.
“I have a 9-year-old I need to be here for,” Lewis said at the time. “I have no intention on leaving him. I don’t want to leave my friends, my family.”
“Hell, I don’t want to leave myself,” she added. “I like being here.”
Sadly, the former “The Ananda Lewis Show” host later announced that her breast cancer had progressed to Stage 4 during an interview with CNN in 2024.
She also admitted that she opted against undergoing a double mastectomy despite her doctor’s suggestion.
In January, just months before her tragic passing, Lewis opened up about her breast cancer journey in an essay published in Essence magazine.
“I don’t want to spend one more minute than I have to suffering unnecessarily,” she wrote. “That, for me, is not the quality of life I’m interested in.”
“When it’s time for me to go,” she added, “I want to be able to look back on my life and say, ‘I did that exactly how I wanted to.’”
CNN correspondent Stephanie Elam, one of Lewis’ closest friends, visited the MTV alum just one day before her passing.
“We thought we had weeks, and it turned out that it turned into days, and it turned out it was just a matter of hours,” Elam said on Friday. “It happened very quickly how things changed.”
The journalist then shared Lewis’ last text message to her.
“You know my feelings on this. We all go,” Lewis reportedly wrote to her. “These bodies are on loan and must be returned. We come in love and choose to leave it with love as well.”