Early Christmas wish to pay funeral costs

This is an early Christmas wish request for my mother Joanne, with a little bit of a background. Meet my mom, Joanne and her husband Steve, my step-father.  This November will mark their 20 year wedding anniversary, hopefully he will live long enough to be celebrate it. The best words to normally describe my mom would be loving, caring, giving.  For the past year she has been sad, depressed and stressed.   In September of last year Steve was having trouble eating, they ran some tests and he was diagnosed with stage 4 esophageal cancer.  By October he was on a feeding tube because one of the tumors was blocking the passageway for food to go down.  He went through chemo, a month of radiation (which helped shrink the tumor so he could eat for a few months) and finally in February had surgery to remove the tumors.  The biopsy showed cancer in the margins, meaning the outermost tissue they removed showed cancer cells.  A CT scan in April confirmed that he still had the cancer and it was in his lymph nodes and is terminal.  They put him on chemo to hopefully slow the progression of it and his scan in July looked promising as it looked like the chemo was killing some of the cancer cells.  But by July and August food started getting stuck in his throat.  He could eat certain things, but he had to have 5 endoscopies to remove food that got stuck - on his tumor that started growing back.  The Dr. confirmed the chemo stopped working and gave him 3 - 6 months (if he is lucky).  He is not always a lucky man... (a black cat ran in front of us when we were driving home from our pedicures) over the weekend. He got lucky with one aspect of his life though - and that was love.  He and my mother met 25 years ago while working at the same company.  They fell in love and got married.  It wasn't always a happy marriage, he will be the first to tell you he wasn't always the best husband, but through the good and the bad she stayed by his side and loved him through it all.  I think he would also say that one of his greatest life accomplishments happened almost 8 years ago - he found sobriety.  It changed his life for the better.  He became a better husband, a better father, grandfather, brother, son.  He lost over 150 pounds, he got healthy again, he became happier.   Then the string of bad luck happened about 5 years ago... he was diagnosed with kidney cancer - beat it.  A year after that he had a heart attack and they had to put 2 stents in.  Problem was the test they needed to do for his heart finished killing his other kidney (which wasn't healthy to begin with).  That started him on dialysis which he has been on for almost 3 years.  He made the kidney transplant list.  Then he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer.  Unfortunately, now it's only a matter of time. Through it all - for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.  The last part of the vows we always assume wont happen until we have lived a full life into our 80s or 90s, not when someone is 54.  My mother has spent the last few years, especially this past year being a caregiver in addition to being his wife.  I have heard of people having cancer and fighting it, sometimes with a good outcome, sometimes not so good.  I never realized how demanding, stressful and heartbreaking it can be on the loved ones who have to care for them.   He has had a long, tough fight this past year between issues with his dialysis fistula to doctors visits and many hospital stays (for numerous tumor bleeds, trouble breathing, pneumonia, low blood levels, just to name a few).  Through it all, Joanne has stuck by his side witnessing the misery and the pain, the hurt and the hunger (he wants more than anything to just be a le to eat a juicy hamburger). As I mentioned earlier my mom has been through a lot this past year.  She is an emotional mess.  I just simply pray that this doesn't break her entirely.  She has many people in her life that will be there for her emotionally and physically (one of the benefits of a large family).  Now she just needs a little help financially, especially considering once he passes, she will also lose his income. So, added to the stress of losing her husband, she has to find a way to pay for his funeral and worry about what she is going to do after he is gone.  As I said, we will all be there for her, as she would be there for any of us, because that is the kind of person she is.   She has already been to the funeral home to start planning his funeral.  She even started a payment plan almost 5 years ago before he even got sick because she couldn't afford life insurance.  She has already paid $3,000 towards his funeral.  Steve and I talked about the future this past weekend when we went for pedicures (one of his little life Joy's these days).  I always pick on him and tell him he has diarrhea of the mouth around me because he doesn't stop talking, but we have had some very meaningful conversations... I am going to miss those.  Anyway, our conversation turned his after life.  He stated he wants to be buried, but understands if he has to be cremated if it's too expensive.  He would love to have a wake, but I told him we may have to cut out the night before wake if it will save some money - he understood (plus, if you have met my mother or have the pleasure of meeting her in the future, you know she doesn't like to touch people (so don't be insulted if she doesn't shake your hand or give you a hug)).  It is very humbling and depressing to talk to someone about their dying, especially at a young age.   My mother doesn't like to talk about it, because let's face it, who wants to face the reality of losing their loved one.  But she also doesn't want to deal with the stress of the money.  That's where my Christmas wish comes in.  If you could donate even just a little to help with the funeral expenses, or to help her live until she can get her head back on straight and her heart to start healing and she can get some assistance, it would be a huge stress reliever to her and to those of us who love her and hate to see her hurting.  We help as much as we can and will continue to do so, but we just need a little extra help this time arou d. I thank you in advance and from the bottom of my heart for reading their story.  Next time you are washing your car, think of Steve (it was one of his favorite things to do).