Raleigh, N.C. — Elizabeth Edwards has canceled her speaking engagements for the rest of the month to tend to her gravely ill mother, according to a press release from Detroit's Metro Parent Magazine on Friday.

Edwards’ 85-year-old mother lives in a nursing facility near the family’s Chapel Hill home.

In a press release Metro Parent magazine stated Edwards would be unable to attend the magazine’s Oct. 15 event “An Evening with Elizabeth Edwards.” The magazine added that Edwards cancled all of her scheduled events this month to tend to her mother who is “gravely ill.”

The wife of two-time Democratic presidential candidate and former North Carolina U.S. Sen. John Edwards was recently part of a roundtable discussion on health care reform in Carrboro.

Edwards was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004 but was declared cancer-free after treatment. Eighteen months ago, she announced the cancer had returned and had spread to her bones, making it no longer curable.