Mother-of-Three Told Cancer is Terminal, Marries Love of Life Before She Dies
Our mortality has a way of clarifying the important things in life. After all, the ephemera of our everyday routines often keep us from striving for what really matters.
We don’t do this because of an appointment, or we don’t do that because we’re tired. We have as many excuses as our minds can whip up.
But let us be confronted with the fact that we won’t live forever and suddenly all of those justifications fall away. That’s what happened with Tracy Swinferd of Bixby, Oklahoma.
The 47-year-old mother-of-three had been with partner Marty for what seemed like forever. But the two had never actually tied the knot.
Then Swinferd got horrible news in April 2017. She had breast cancer — and not just any ordinary strain of the awful disease.
Her cancer was stage IV, one of the most virulent types. “It’s the most aggressive kind, the ugliest kind of cancer,” she told The Daily Mail.
“Chemotherapy has made some of my tumors shrink, but it won’t ever go away. It is terminal.”
That was when Martin decided it was time. He wanted to marry Swinferd — and he wanted to marry her right then.
“”He’s like, ‘I’ll marry you at the post office! I’ll marry you wherever,’” she told KOTV.
But Swinferd turned him down. She was scared that marriage would make her death even more difficult for him.
It was already hard, though. “When Tracy came home and told me about her diagnosis, it took my breath away,” Martin said.
“What do you do in that situation? We talked about it and she called her kids.”
Martin also didn’t stop asking for her hand. He explained, “I always wanted to marry Tracy, but in the last year I asked her four times to marry me.”
Finally she said yes, but there was a problem — she was so tired from chemotherapy that she didn’t have the energy to plan a wedding.
So the nonprofit Wish Upon a Wedding stepped in. According to the charity’s website, it helps couples facing health challenges tie the knot in style.
Wish Upon a Wedding got local businesses to donate everything. On June 7, Swinferd and Martin were married.
“They did everything. I don’t think there’s one thing they forgot,” Swinferd said.
“It’s the first time I’d been able to dress up, feel beautiful again. I wake up every day and I’m thankful I get to breathe another day.”
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