Bride-To-Be and Terminally Ill Dad Take Father-Daughter Dance Photos While He Can Still Walk
In Psalm 90, the Hebrew patriarch Moses considered the brevity of life. He compared mankind to quickly flourishing grass or dreams that vanish after a night’s slumber.
If you’ve lived any time at all, you know the truth of his assertion. People perish unexpectedly and all too quickly.
Some even find themselves passing away in the prime of their lives. And it’s incredibly poignant to find men looking to give their daughters away in marriage who might also soon be facing eternity.
According to Today, Pete Otto was one of those men. When he attended a friend’s wedding in 2017, he found it colored with sadness.
See, Otto knew that he faced terminal cancer. He also realized that he might not live long enough to give away his pair of young daughters.
But during the reception, the newly married couple called Otto and his girls to the dance floor. They had reserved the time so that they could enjoy their own father-daughter dance.
“This was their big day, and the fact that they let me and my family have our moment was so selfless,” Jessica Otto said. “It was the most beautiful gift they could have ever given us.”
USA Today reported how Mary Bourne Butts got to fulfill a childhood dream with her father, Jim Roberts, on the dance floor at her December 29, 2018, wedding. As a child, Mary had enjoyed dancing with her father to Lee Ann Womack’s “I Hope You Dance” and had planned to feature it at their wedding reception.
However, her dad got diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in 2017 and entered hospice the month of her wedding. That didn’t stop them, though.
Mary brought her dad out onto the dance floor in his wheelchair, swaying back and forth as the room looked on. “We had always planned to use the song — we weren’t sure how he was going to even feel that day — we just knew that we were going to do it somehow,” she said.
On Facebook, Bonnie Turner Photography recounted how the titular photographer had a surprising encounter with a client, a woman named Becky Carey.
“She got engaged and booked an engagement session with me,” Turner wrote.
“Never settled on exact date due to all the rain we had been getting. … Then I received this email in September.”
In the email, Carey asked if she could rework her planned shoot. Why? Her father had advanced prostate cancer, and she didn’t think he would last much longer.
“My dad has been fighting Prostate cancer and his body is now at the point where it can’t handle more treatment,” Carey wrote in her email. “We found out yesterday that he starts hospice this week. We’d really love to use the deposit Matt gave you to do a family photo session.
“Matt and I will worry about our photos later, because this is more pressing with time. We haven’t had professional family photos taken since my brother and I were little, and this would mean so much to us. Of course this is a very difficult and dark time, but I know how you feel about love and capturing it so beautifully and meaningfully.”
Turner agreed to the photo shoot and captured the emotional moment between the father and daughter. “These photos are near and dear to this family and most of all, special to her,” Turner wrote. “She knew he possibly wouldn’t make it to walk her down the aisle or share that father-daughter dance on her wedding day. So she took it upon herself to scratch those engagement photos for a while and share that father-daughter moment in the back yard where she grew up.”
“Photographs and memories are EVERYTHING when they are all you have left.” Indeed, they are especially in this case, as Carey’s father passed away on March 28.
Our prayers go out for Carey and her family during this difficult time.
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