ELLSWORTH – When Shane Stecher walks up to the podium to deliver the salutatory address at Ellsworth High School’s graduation ceremony tonight, his most ardent supporter will be absent from the crowd.

But her spirit most certainly will be with him.

Shane’s mother, Deborah Stecher, died two years ago. It was Feb. 13, 2003, a Thursday, he recalls. He was in the kitchen making himself breakfast before school when his mother became tired and went into another room to lie down. She died a few moments later.

The exact cause of her death remains a mystery, since an autopsy was deemed inconclusive. As far as the Stecher family knows, something suddenly made her heart beat out of rhythm, preventing a sufficient amount of oxygenated blood from getting to her organs, including her brain. She was 46 years old.

Shane, 18, hasn’t spoken publicly about his mother’s death until this week, which has been punctuated with graduation-related activities that he wishes he could share with her. She was an active volunteer in the city’s school system, always willing to chip in when a fund-raiser needed to be organized or the drama program needed someone to sew costumes. She was also a substitute secretary at the high school and president of the Ellsworth Music Boosters.

“She was really bright around people,” he said. “She was very loving, just a sunny person to be around. … She left a pretty big hole.”

It is difficult now for him to talk about the week immediately after his mother’s death. He went to school the day she died, as did his brother Will, who was a junior at the high school at the time.

“I needed some normalcy for a little while. It was all pretty surreal,” Shane said. “I got a lot of support from people.”

His father, Carl Stecher, said the sudden death sent the family into shock. Counseling helped them.

“The three of us just kind of leaned on each other and got through it,” he said.

A National Merit Scholar who scored a 1580 on his SATs, Shane has been accepted at Michigan State University, where he plans to study music. He is the recipient of the university’s Alumni Distinguished Scholarship, which is given annually to incoming students with the most impressive records of academic achievement.

Moving to the big campus will be an adjustment, since the university is seven times more populated than Ellsworth and “a couple of plane rides from home,” as Shane puts it. He is looking forward to the change, but wishes his mother could be present to experience it with him.

“It has just been bizarre, overall, not having my mom around,” he said. “This is one of those big milestones. There will be a few more, and those will also be hard, too.”

Deborah Stecher was always proud of her sons, and she had a way of bragging about them without being boastful, according to her family.

If she could be here, she would be pleased, family members said.

“She had a way of being gracefully proud,” Carl Stecher said. “So I think she would be ecstatic.”