LIU student honors mother at graduation, health walk

At her graduation ceremony from the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University Friday, 22-year-old Alexa Tiven wrote "4 Mom" on her mortarboard.

She also tucked a picture of her mother inside the cap, "so I know she's with me at graduation," Tiven explained.

Alexa's mother, Dianne Tiven, died last year at 51 from a rare form of cancer.

With her mother now gone, family milestones are bittersweet and tinged with loss. Alexa Tiven and her siblings must renegotiate birthdays, graduations, anniversaries - and Mother's Day.

"You can go into a ball and think this is the worst day," said Alexa, who lives in Levittown. So, "in my head, I celebrate my sister, aunts, grandmas, and celebrate everyone who's a mother."

Next Sunday, the Tiven family plans to honor Dianne Tiven in another way, by walking to raise money for the Katz Women's Hospital and Institute for Women's Health at the North Shore-LIJ Health System.

"When my mother got really sick and was really at the end, it was when I really realized we have to do something," said Alexa Tiven's sister, 29-year-old Nicole Mancini of Levittown. "In the back of my mind, this honors my mother. That for me is a big piece of it."

The group plans to wear Mighty Mouse T-shirts for the walk at Jones Beach, for which they've raised more than $3,000. Dianne Tiven was nicknamed "Mighty Mouse" by the doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, who marveled at how hard she fought the leiomyosarcoma during the five years she was treated for the disease.

"She lived like Mighty Mouse," Mancini said. "I had two babies while she was sick, and she would take care of them every day. You would never know anything was wrong."

Both sisters called their mother their best friend, and recalled her as a relentlessly positive person who was determined to make each day count.

"It's been hard since she passed away not to have that encouragement," Alexa Tiven said. "But I think about her every day and what she'd want for me. There are times when I want to give up, but then I think of my mom. And she's the voice in the back of my head."

Now, Mancini and Tiven say they hope their efforts for the hospital will be a lasting testament to their mother.

"This walk to me and my sister, this was so much about honoring her," Alexa Tiven said. "It was about women. We have to do this one. We can honor every other woman who walks for her."