Namrata and Bhavesh Pandya's son, Khushil, was diagnosed with a rare brain cancer and given months to live.
The heartbroken pair kept the full news from the young boy, but after he died in September last year found a diary that revealed he knew he would die.
The brave youngster had written in March 2015, when he was diagnosed: "From day one, I knew the consequences."
Namrata told the Mirror: "In that split second, I knew that Khushil was aware there was no cure for his brain tumour and that he was dying.
“We’d decided not to tell him because we wanted to protect him and didn’t want him to lose hope that one day he would grow up to realise his dream of being a scientist or zoologist."
She said some parents might think it was the wrong decision, but they wanted him to continue living without worrying.
But Khushil had known he wouldn't survive the cancer.
He had been diagnosed in 2015 after an optician noticed he had a squint in his left eye.
The family were sent to an eye hospital to have it checked out, and then sent on to hospital for an MRI scan.
Namrata and Bhavesh were told their son had a kind of cancer no child had ever survived.
The devastated mum said: “I couldn’t believe that from having a happy life together, in a second everything had been snatched away.
“We decided we wouldn’t tell Khushil about his diagnosis – we wanted to protect him and let him live his life as normally as possible.”
Instead the family drew up a wish list of what Khushil most wanted to do.
They went to safari parks, saw the Northern Lights, met magician Dynamo and Steve Backshall.
As a keen Manchester United fan the teenager even watched a match from the Old Trafford director's box and met some of his sporting heroes.
Eventually the symptoms got worse and the couple cared for Khushil at home until he died in his mother's arms.
The couple have set up a fund in Khushil’s memory for The Brain Tumour Charity to raise money for research.
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