Stephanie Young- Three Brothers

Three cheetah brothers hunt in a pack on the plains.  One looks back at the camera.

Printed framelessly on 8 x 12 acrylic with a hanging back.

About the Artist and the Artwork:

"There are moments that divide a life into before and after.

For our family, that moment came in the fall of 2023.  Our son was 5 years old and my husband, Mike, was diagnosed with cancer.

From the beginning, we knew it was terminal.  There was no gentle progression into that truth, no period in which we could convince ourselves that everything would eventually return to normal. In an instant, the future we had imagined was replaced by appointments, treatments, test results, and impossible conversations. Time, once something we assumed we had in abundance, became something we counted and guarded preciously.

Mike fought with all his might for more than a year. He endured treatments, procedures, exhaustion, uncertainty, and pain, always pushing for more time with the people he loved. His strength was not loud or dramatic. It appeared in the way he kept showing up, even on the hardest days. It was in the laughter he still found with our son, the plans he continued to make, and the determination he carried even when his body was asking him to stop.

Cancer may have made him a patient, but it never stopped him from being a husband, a teacher, or a father.  Through it all, our son Finian remained at the center of his universe.

Now, Fin had always been obsessed with cheetahs. He loved everything about them—their spots, their speed, their grace, and the almost unbelievable way they moved across the earth. Cheetahs filled his books, his toys, his drawings, and his imagination.

At some point during Mike’s illness, we began talking about taking him to see them in the wild.

It seemed impossible. It was the kind of trip people dream about for years, a once-in-a-lifetime adventure requiring more planning, energy, and courage than we felt we had. But cancer had already taught us that waiting for the perfect time could mean missing our only opportunity.  We could not control the ending of our story, but we could still decide how to live the pages that remained.

By the spring of 2025, Mike’s health had begun to take a downward turn. Traveling across the world no longer felt merely ambitious. It felt almost unimaginable.

And yet, in March, we got on a plane to Tanzania.

Against the fear, the fatigue, and every practical reason to stay home, we went.

For one extraordinary week, we traveled through Serengeti National Park, Ngorongoro Crater, and Tarangire National Park. We crossed vast stretches of open grassland beneath skies that seemed too large to be real. We watched herds move across the plains, saw elephants wandering among ancient baobab trees, and looked out over the breathtaking landscape, and I got to live out a childhood dream of being a wildlife photographer, pretending I was on a shoot for National Geographic.

For that week, our family was not defined by cancer.

We were travelers. We were adventurers. We were a mother, a father, and a son discovering a place more beautiful and wild than we had imagined.

And boy, did we see cheetahs.  And leopards.  And lions, and elephants, and more.

The trip demanded more from Mike than most people could have understood. He was already sick. His body was already weakening. Yet he traveled thousands of miles because he wanted to give our son something cancer could not take away: a memory.  A story.  A final great adventure with his dad.

Mike died at home in August of 2025, leaving an absence that cannot be filled or fully described. Grief changed the shape of our family. It changed the sound of our home, the rhythm of our days, and the future we once imagined.  Six months later, my mom joined him after a brief and brutal battle with her own cancer.

But death did not take everything.  It did not take the love Mike gave us.  It did not erase the year he fought so fiercely to remain by our side.  And it did not take our memories of Tanzania.

That journey remains a place of light inside the darkest chapter of our lives. It reminds me that courage is not the absence of fear. Sometimes courage is boarding a plane while carrying more fear than you think you can bear. Sometimes it is choosing adventure when life has given you every reason to retreat. Sometimes it is a terminally ill father traveling across the world so his son can see cheetahs running free.

When I think of those cheetahs now, I think about more than their beauty or speed.

I think about Mike."

***

50% of the proceeds of this piece will be donated to the National Geographic Society to support their conservation efforts. To learn more about their work please visit https://www.nationalgeographic.org/society

To see more of Stephanie's work be sure to follow on Instagram @a_lil_mischievous