PITTSFIELD — When Christine Delph found out her cancer was terminal, she booked a room at the Howard Johnson in Lenox. That’s where she broke the news to her six children.
The family home, in which Christine sat recently to tell her story, was too important to be tainted by a bad memory, she says.
“I didn’t want to tell them here.”
Nearby, Kendra, Christine’s oldest, explains: “We were at a hotel so that, like, whenever we walked into this room, it wasn’t the room we were told our mom was dying.”
Moved by the plight of their co-worker Christine, the bus drivers at Pittsfield Public Schools are organizing a fundraiser with bands and the works from noon to 5 p.m. Sunday, March 5 at Tavern at the A in Pittsfield. All proceeds will go directly to her.
The bus drivers and bus monitors have planned the benefit and opened a GoFundMe campaign with a goal of $35,000 in just four weeks. Dozens of businesses and local residents are donating time, food and entertainment. They even paid for a billboard on East Street advertising the event.
Christine Delph, 40, has been on medical leave from her bus driving job since November 2021.
At home in Pittsfield, 40-year-old Christine Delph, a Pittsfield School District bus driver, is battling stage-four breast cancer.
©2023 The Berkshire Eagle
“Back in September of ’21, when she told us at our orientation that she had cancer, that sticks in my head,” Christine Gingras, a bus driver and a benefit organizer, says. “That moment when she said that, I think I was the first one to go up and give her a hug. Because I just felt so bad. You know, she has six kids.”
Gingras describes Christine Delph as compassionate and loving with a sense of humor she likes and a knack she admires: quick-witted, light comebacks.
“She’ll be the first one to jump in if someone needs help,” Gingras says. “She’s just that kind of person. So, we all want to do the same for her.”
Christine Delph is amazed by the support she has received from her former co-workers.
“I’m on a billboard,” she says, disbelief in her voice. “I’m blown away. All of the gift baskets. I haven’t seen them, but I hear that there’s a lot. It’s just businesses and people bringing things in for gift baskets just out of the goodness of their hearts, donating.”
Her next words: “I miss my bus kids.”
Kids from Pittsfield School District bus driver Christine Delph’s 107 bus route constructed a huge Valentine’s Day card for Delph as she battles stage 4 breast cancer.
They miss her, too. The kids on Bus 107 sent her an enormous handmade cardboard greeting card on Valentine’s Day that they signed, with a heart on the front and their messages inside. It has the marquee spot in her bedroom.
But her first concern is for her own children, who range in age from 5 to 21, and all live with her in Pittsfield.
Christine Delph smiles amid the chaos of her family of six children, two dogs, and her mother, as she battles stage 4 breast cancer at home in Pittsfield.
Here’s how she describes them:
Kendra, 21, her oldest, works at Polo in Lee. “She’s been my right hand. She’s been my co-parent, my confidant, my support.”
Kelliauna, 17, is a senior at Taconic High School where she is pursuing early childhood education and care. She also works at Conte Head Start. “She has just completely blossomed with all of this. She’s filling in the gaps. She tries to make sure that she gets the kids out for an activity at least twice a month.”
Josiah will turn 15 on Feb. 27. He is a freshman at Taconic, who has been an athlete. He is a “smart, sweet, bright young man, and he’s trying to decide what he’s going to do with the rest of his life.”
Jadon, 12, goes to Herberg Middle School, “and he does a great job of helping to take care of me, and he loves Legos.” He is in the finals for the regional spelling bee.
Cara, 7, “is JoJo Siwa’s biggest fan,” and attends first grade at Egremont Elementary School.
Caitrina, 5, “my baby,” is in kindergarten at Egremont.
Christine Delph and her youngest daughter Caitrina, 5, shared a quiet moment together at home. Delph died Thursday.
A story of adversity
Christine Delph is used to living with adversity. Born in Coupeville, Wash., she was home-schooled and attended Lighthouse Christian Center and Lighthouse Christian Academy in Oak Harbor, Wash. At 16 in 2000, she joined the U.S. Air Force as a weapons loader on F-16s.
Shortly after joining, she found herself pregnant. She learned that she would have to give up custody if she stayed in the Air Force.
“There was plenty that could serve my country, but only one that could serve my child, and that was me,” Christine says.
Facing mounting pressure from the Air Force, she left her post in Mountain Home, Idaho, as an airman first class with an honorable discharge.
She returned to Oak Harbor, Wash., to live with her father, Michael. She worked in a restaurant and hotel to support herself and Kendra, later moving into an apartment. She attended Oak Harbor Church of the Nazarene.
In 2005, she had Kelliauna. Then, in 2007, she married a man in the U.S. Army. Christine and her two children moved to Fort Carson, Colo., where he was stationed. Then he attempted to kill her. Shortly after he was arrested, she learned she was pregnant.
“That was, emotionally, a really hard pregnancy for me,” Christine says, referring to Josiah. “But he’s my first love.”
She returned to Washington to live with her father. In 2012, she broke off an engagement to a man in Marysville, Wash.
Her father had remarried, and her mother, Susan Delph, had moved to Pittsfield. “So I packed up my four kids and moved 3,000 miles up here.”
Her first job in 2012 was as a bus monitor for Pittsfield Public Schools, where she immediately began training to become a bus driver.
The initial diagnosis
In June 2021, “I felt a teeny-tiny lump, and it had gotten a little bit bigger in July. I started feeling tired, and I was losing my appetite. I lost 10 pounds. I was trying to lose weight, so it didn’t seem too alarming. But that was a lot of weight to lose in a month.” She says, “I just knew it was cancer when I felt it, and I felt how fast it was growing.”
Christine was diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer Aug. 13, 2021. At that time she was working summer jobs in the kitchen and driving the bus at Mah-Kee-Nac in Lenox. It was triple negative invasive ductal carcinoma, the most aggressive form of breast cancer.
Pittsfield School District bus driver Christine Delph, who is battling stage 4 breast cancer, checks her blood oxygen level at home.
Two things happened simultaneously: chemotherapy and the shedding of her hair. So she gathered her children and went to her mother’s house on Sept. 14, 2021.
“We made a big ordeal of it,” she recalls. “I took pictures, like family pictures, with my kids in my mom’s garden. And then my kids each took turns shaving my head.”
She told her children not to shave their own heads.
“The first round, I went into it feeling really empowered, feeling really strong,” Christine says. “It was early. So I was confident it was going to work. And I wanted to stay super positive for the kids, and I didn’t want them to be as scared as I was.”
Christine had all the side effects of chemotherapy, and then some.
“Yeah, there’s a lot of hospital trips. It’s rough.”
During chemotherapy the tumor grew and her cancer went from stage 1 to stage 3. Christine underwent a single mastectomy and had lymph nodes removed on Feb. 8, 2022. At that point, she was told at that time she was cancer free. She began preventive radiation in April, which was exhausting and painful.
On Jan. 3, 2023, following a high-tech scan, she was told her cancer had advanced to stage 4, with spots on her hips, spine, skull, lungs, lymph nodes and trachea. She is undergoing chemotherapy and needs oxygen to breathe more comfortably.
Christine Delph holds some of her paintings, a favorite pastime, at her home in Pittsfield.
At home in Pittsfield
On the front porch of the Delphs’ home, there are signs that someone is ill.
There’s a pink ribbon wreath with the word “Hope” on it next to the doorway. There is a rack holding a transparent plastic box with masks and hand sanitizer. A wheelchair is folded up near the scooters and fire wood.
Inside, there’s likely to be a bit of controlled chaos.
With the seven humans, two dogs and three cats, there are often more than one sentient being in motion, speaking or barking.
The family enjoys telling stories about each other and themselves, particularly their foibles that seem funny now but weren’t in the moment — like the time Jadon drove his bicycle off a slide at the Egremont Elementary School playground and did a face plant.
“Seeing the support of my community, I am so blown away," Christine Delph said at an event earlier this year. Delph, a school bus driver and single mother of six, died Thursday at Berkshire Medical Center. She was 40.
Above the mantel of the fireplace in the sitting room, there’s a family portrait. Photographer Angela Dimock, free of charge, donated the picture as part of her Lens of Love project, as a way to honor families in which someone has a terminal diagnosis.
Cara does a cartwheel spontaneously. Jadon stretches out on the floor with Lyla, the husky-Labrador mix. Caitrina snuggles with her grandmother, who happens to be visiting.
The next family car will be registered in Kendra’s name to avoid a death tax. And Christine wonders whether she’ll be around for Kelliauna’s graduation in June.
Living the reality now
There have been some bad nights, nights when Kendra went to bed thinking her mother might not wake up in the morning.
“Living with somebody who has cancer is not realizing that you’re not feeling any emotions because you shut them off,” Kendra says. “You are going about your day, and things are just kind of happening and you’re not really registering it. And it’s not, we’re going to sit down and have family dinner every night. It’s going upstairs and locking yourself in your room and pretending like the rest of the world around you doesn’t exist because you don’t know how to cope.”
Christine Delph, right, who is fighting stage four breast cancer, excitedly tells her friend Breanna Santiago that she she just found out she won’t need a blood transfusion at her home in Pittsfield.
Breanna Santiago, one of Christine’s friends, drops by to check in, give Christine a hug and hear the good news of the day: Christine doesn’t need a blood transfusion. Things are looking up right now. Christine is able to sleep nights without oxygen, though she’s using it during the day.
“It’s an answer to prayer,” Susan Delph says, tearing up. “We have so many people praying across this country. … I know this is a God thing. … Just so many people are watching to see, and I believe in an answer to prayer.”
Christine has written her will and planned for her children’s future. As to her own, it is now.
“Seeing the support of my community, I am so blown away,” she says. “And it’s happening. And I don’t have to worry about it.”
At home with her six children, her mother, and her two dogs, Pittsfield School District bus driver Christine Delph is battling stage 4 breast cancer. From left; Kelliauna Delph, 17, holding Caitrina, 5, Christine, Cara, 7, Josiah, 15, Kendra, 21, Jadon, 12, and Christine’s mother, Susan, with dogs Lyla and Jack.