College Senior 'Drew Her Last Breath' Holding Brother's Hand After Brain Hemorrhage on Spring Break, Says Mom (2024)

College senior Liza Burke got a headache and laid down while on spring break in Mexico. The 21-year-old had a brain hemorrhage, and was later diagnosed with an aggressive, malignant brain tumor. She died six weeks later, on Friday.

"That tumor may have taken her life, but it didn't slow her down," her mother, Laura McKeithen, 55, tells PEOPLE. "She lived life."

Her mother remembers Liza as a brave, fearless, adventurous, and joyful woman.

"Her legacy is to live life to its fullest, every day," says her mom, who signs emails #LiveLikeLiza. "What I want people to know is that she freaking did life well. I wish that I could do my life as well as she's done in her life."

Born in Asheville, N.C., Liza was the youngest of three children. Liza has a 26-year-old brother, Jack, while her older sister, Edie, was almost 10 when she died in May 2008 of a rare genetic disorder known as (mucopolysaccharidosis type one). At the time, Liza was 6.

After Edie's death, Liza and her mother formed a close bond and shared many adventures together.

"That was a gift that Edie gave me," Laura says. "I knew I couldn't take it for granted. So as a mom, I have no regrets."

In high school, Liza wanted to study abroad, so her mother rented out their Asheville home and together they spent a semester living in San Pancho, Mexico. After school, Liza taught local elementary school children English. "They adored her," her mother says. When locked out of their rental home, her "fearless" daughter climbed a ledge and jumped through a window.

Liza earned a scholarship to the University of Georgia, where she studied business management and Spanish. She called her mom almost every day when walking to class. She was also the maid of honor when her mother remarried 1 ½ years ago after reconnecting with her college sweetheart during the pandemic.

As her studies continued, so did Liza's world travels.

"She's been to more countries than I've been to," says her mom. While studying abroad in Barcelona for her junior year, she went traveling with friends "every weekend," and last year, Liza spent her spring break with her mom in Greece.

This spring break, Liza and her boyfriend went with 53 friends to Cabo. Her boyfriend, a Sigma Nu, organized the trip, while Liza, a Kappa Delta, organized the fun activities and adventures.

After flying to Cabo on March 6, Liza texted her mother pictures of her doing handstands on the beach. She rented a boat for everyone to go cliff jumping. That Thursday, the group had a bonfire on the beach where they sang songs and told stories. The next morning, Liza woke up and went to the gym to lift weights and work out with her boyfriend.

But at breakfast, Liza had a headache. "Then all of a sudden, she was like, 'Oh my God, I can't see you,'" Laura recalls. A friend told Liza that sounded like a migraine, so Liza went to her room to take a nap.

Hours later, friends couldn't wake Liza and a doctor at the resort told them to get her to the hospital, so they jumped in a cab.There, doctors discovered a brain bleed and suspected a potential ruptured arteriovenous malformation (AVM).

Laura traveled to Mexico and air lifted Liza to Jacksonville, Fla. (where her mother lives) on March 14. "It's like a movie," Laura says. "President Biden was flying into the airport that our airplane needed to leave and so we were delayed."

At the Mayo Clinic in Florida, doctors ruled out an AVM, and diagnosed Liza with a malignant, aggressive tumor in the brainstem.

When she woke up from sedation, Liza tried to rip the ventilator out of her mouth. "They were worried she wouldn't breathe on her own, but of course she was fine," her mother says.

After being taken off the ventilator, Liza "kept falling in and out of sleep because this tumor was pushing on the area that keeps you awake."

"When she was awake, she was talking a little bit, and she was communicating by squeezing my hand or wiggling her toes," her mom says. "I asked her, 'Liza, are you scared?' I had been asking her all kinds of other questions and when I asked her if she was scared, she did not squeeze my hand."

Liza asked her mother for her phone to take pictures. "At that moment, I thought, 'She's going to live,' because why would she want pictures of this? Why would she want me to have pictures of this tragedy to have to look back on of her?" her mom recalls

Her daughter then began what was supposed to be a six-week course of daily radiation treatments. "I thought she was recovering," her mother says. "She was doing squats and riding a bike and they had her trying to walk."

But on April 13, doctors found Liza had a new hemorrhage on her brain. Still, her mother was hopeful.

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Doctors performed a procedure to install an external ventricular drain (EVD) to drain the blood off the brain. Her mother's desire to not have Liza intubated again prompted conversations with her medical team.

Freshman year of college, Liza mentioned to her mother that she had headaches. "She told me on four different occasions, 'I think there's something wrong in my head, Mom. I think there's something wrong,'" Laura says. "I think she even mentioned it to her doctor."

In hindsight, her mother wonders if these were early signs of the brain tumor.

"I had a sit-down with her oncologist. I said, 'If we had caught this sooner, if we had caught this when she first told me that she thought there was something wrong in her head — do you think things could have been different?" her mother says. "Her friends had decorated her hospital room — her room was very colorful and lively and it was full, full, full, full of pictures of her and her friends. The oncologist looked around the room and said, 'Well, I can tell you one thing for sure: She wouldn't have all of these pictures.'"

To this: Laura says the doctor explained that the results would have likely been the same either way, telling her, "We would eventually be exactly where we are right now."

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When the medical team said Liza was not getting better and recommended hospice care, Laura says she thought to herself, "What would Liza want?"

"She would want to be somewhere beautiful, where she could be with her friends, and with her family and everybody could celebrate her, and she could be outside and enjoy the beach or the mountains," her mother recalls thinking.

So she found a house on Airbnb, making sure the owners were comfortable with it being used for hospice care, and rented it for a month. On April 19, Liza moved into the house and her friends and grandparents visited.

Although she was awake and alert, she couldn't talk. "At that point, really all she could do was push on us with her toes," her mom says. "Occasionally, she might do a little gesture with her mouth or her eyelids, but she would wiggle her toes."

Liza lived in hospice for nine days. She died around 2 a.m. Friday.

Her mother's close friend who was there when Laura was in labor was beside Liza when the 21-year-old student took her last breath.

Laura, who went to her own bedroom that evening, says "I knew if I was with her, I would probably drive her crazy, staring at her and squeezing her hand and squeezing her toes and kissing her."

"Her brother slept on the sofa and held her hand all night long," her mom says. "She drew her last breath with Jack holding her hand."

Liza was cremated and her mother plans to scatter her ashes in the mountains and possibly some in Mexico, which was "her favorite country."

Laura plans to attend Liza's graduation at UGA on May 12 and accept her daughter's diploma. That day, the school will also have a moment of silence in her memory. Her mother is asking for contributions to The Liza and Edie Burke Education fund to honor both sisters.

"I am celebrating the fact that she really lived it big. She lived it big," her mom says. "She was very, very authentic and unapologetically herself. That, to me, that's the legacy: Don't waste time worrying about stupid stuff. Just go for it."