Tomorrow afternoon Hannah Wickham will be both wed and mourned in the chapel of the school at which she was a student two years ago.
The 19-year-old daughter of Australian swimming great Tracey Wickham died in hospital on Thursday three hours after a death-bed marriage to fellow cancer
patient Tom O'Driscoll.
"We are going to treat it as a wedding," Tracey Wickham said of tomorrow's service in the chapel of Brisbane's All Hallows School.
"She's going to be buried in her wedding dress and there will be six bridesmaids and groomsmen, including my son," she told Southern Cross radio. "Their little dog is going to be carrying the rings up in the chapel."
Hannah was one of two children of the athlete, considered to be one of Australia's greatest middle-distance swimmers, setting new world records for the 400m, 800m and 1500m freestyle.
Her 1978 400m record stood until last August, when it was broken by Brisbane swimmer Bronte Barratt.
Three years ago Hannah found a lump on her leg, later diagnosed as the fatally aggressive Ewings sarcoma. Battling a cancer that repeatedly retreated before returning even more aggressively, Hannah was convinced she would survive.
"She never once complained, never once asked, 'why me?'," Tracey Wickham told The Australian. "To the end she was brave and in good spirits.
"Right from when she was a little girl we would always play the game of being the first to say a pinch and a punch for the first of the month and soon after midnight on October 1, she sent me that text message. But soon after that she started to fade."
Her dying wish was to marry O'Driscoll, whom she met while also being treated for cancer.
"Tom is the most special person," Tracey Wickham said. "They were meant to meet ... because he was her soulmate and vice versa. The year they had together was so beautiful."
The couple were to have married next week. Instead, they were wed at Brisbane's Wesley Hospital.
"There were about 20 people there, close friends and a couple of nurses," Tracey Wickham told The Australian. "It was a beautiful ceremony. And then she was gone."
