Woman fulfills dying wish to attend granddaughter’s wedding

By John Le

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    OLD FORT, North Carolina (WLOS) — A McDowell County woman’s poignant bucket list exemplified how much she valued her family until the day she died.

“From the time I was born, I was kind at her hip,” said Kelly Lawing, who grew up with a grandmother with infinite wisdom.

“She taught me how to be a lady, why we go to church,” she explained.

Her grandmother, Marie Parker, never knew a stranger. She enjoyed feeding folks, loved to smile, and she especially adored teaching Kelly everything she knew.

“She taught me how to can beans, how to be a homemaker, how to be a wife,” Lawing said.

She lives just a couple of hundred feet from Parker’s yellow house, which is now painfully empty.

“And now that she’s no longer with us, it’s extremely hard to look outside and know that she isn’t there,” Lawing said.

“She was first diagnosed in January. It was very sudden. And the one thing she said was, ‘I can’t believe I have cancer,'” she recalled.

Parker’s health rapidly declined over the spring. Together, they faced heart-wrenching questions.

“Radiation’s over, how do we move forward, and we had to be goal-oriented,” Lawing said, becoming emotional as she remembers a painful conversation. “And it was hard for me to ask the person that has cared for me her whole life, having to make that role change, and say ‘What do you want? What can I do for you to make the rest of your life as meaningful and as important as possible? Like what do you want?’ And she said, ‘I want to be at that wedding. I’m gonna be at your wedding! I have to see my baby get married.'”

Lawing’s fiance Alex popped the question last September.

Earlier this year, Parker began receiving home hospice care, hopeful that she would be at the wedding she’d always looked forward to.

Certified Nursing Assistant Katlyn Gortney and Registered Nurse Tonia Harris of CarePartners Hospice McDowell became emotionally invested in making her dying wish a reality.

“I think with hospice, people think about dying,” Harris said. “And it’s not about dying. It’s about living.”

“It’s about putting your best foot forward,” Gortney added. “Even though you are sickly, and you don’t feel the best. But we come into your home in hopes of making what life you have left enjoyable.”

Going to her granddaughter’s wedding in March was Parker’s number one priority.

“I walked in, and her face lit up,” Lawing said, recalling the special day in Gastonia. “And to see it come to fruition, for her, I think it was overjoying. I expected her to sob, but I think she was too happy. She just had the biggest grin on her face.”

Not long after the wedding, Parker checked off another goal. She desperately wanted to see Lawing’s house and the beautiful table made by Lawing’s brother.

“When she saw it, she was like, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to eat here. It’s so gorgeous,'” Lawing recalled of her grandmother.

“That was her last wish on this earth, was to see Kelly get married and to see this house completed,” Gortney stressed.

After all they’ve been through, Lawing considers Nana’s caregivers family.

“My Nana loved them just as much as she loved me, and I am so thankful,” she said.

Marie and her husband Clarence were married 56 years.

“So now I wear her wedding band. She just wanted me to be as happy as she was,” Lawing told News 13.

Marie Parker died at 84, just a couple of months after the wedding. She was buried beside her husband at the Salem Free Will Baptist cemetery.

The woman Lawing called Nana went to the grave knowing her granddaughter is happy. That’s all she ever wanted, right up until the very end.

“It just seems fitting that she was so present and around for every important part of my life, she wouldn’t dare miss my wedding,” Lawing said.

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