A Brazilian family has spoken out after a mother and daughter battling cancer died just ten hours apart, each unaware the other had passed.
Cibele Marchis, 28, died at 4 p.m. On September 24 in Mogi Guaçu, São Paulo, while her mother Maria Elisabete Nogueira, 56, lay sedated in a different hospital. Maria died at approximately 2 a.m. On September 25, never learning of her daughter’s fate.
The women had made a pact. Rowilson Leandro da Costa, Cibele’s cousin, told G1 that the family honored specific requests to keep news of either death from the other. “Neither of them wanted to see the other die,” he said. “They even talked about it, sometimes jokingly, sometimes seriously — and it happened. Neither of them knew about the other’s death. It’s truly astonishing.”
Rowilson described the devastation now facing Maria’s husband and Cibele’s father. “He lost his family. To come home and find no one there anymore – it’s sad, difficult,” he added.
Cibele had been public about her health journey since receiving a rare adrenal cancer diagnosis in 2024. On Instagram in 2025, she detailed the path to discovering the disease. “A year ago, I discovered that I had a rare adrenal cancer — a 10 cm tumor that had already taken over my kidney,” she wrote.
She continued: “Getting to the diagnosis was a long road. I could feel that something was wrong, but none of the tests showed why. Even so, I never ignored what I was feeling … Not long afterward, kidney pain led me to get a CT scan, and there was the tumor.”
By the time of that post, Cibele had reached her eighth cycle of chemotherapy. She shared hospital photos alongside her updates, including a video of herself receiving IV treatment with a stark caption about perspective. “As long as your only problem is money, be grateful. It’s worse to face something that not all the money in the world can solve,” she wrote.
Maria Elisabete was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer roughly a year after her daughter’s diagnosis, according to G1. Few details about her treatment have been reported.
The mother and daughter were buried together in a joint ceremony, local outlets noted. Their deaths came after both women had spent months facing aggressive cancers while remaining connected through their shared experience and their mutual wish to spare each other final grief.
Cibele’s social media presence had made her health battle visible to followers, offering unvarnished glimpses into life with advanced cancer. Her posts traced a trajectory from diagnosis through chemotherapy, marked by moments of dark reflection on what money could and could not fix.
The family’s decision to maintain silence between the two hospitals ensured that neither woman spent her final hours mourning the other. That choice, once discussed between the pair themselves, became the framework for their last day.