‘I didn’t think my mum would make it to my wedding – the hospice organised a last-minute ceremony for us’

A mum-of-two from Bristol urges people to donate to hospice care, after one organised a last-minute wedding so her terminally-ill mother could watch her marry the love of her life.

Jodie Williams, 36, lost her mum Chelle Rawlings on September 23, 2024. She had mucosal melanoma, a rare and aggressive melanoma that develops in the mucous membranes in the mouth, nose and throat, among other areas.

Chelle was just 57 when she was diagnosed in October 2023, after a routine operation that exposed the tumour, and her health rapidly declined.

Jodie was due to marry Joe, her partner of 10 years and with whom she now has two sons, Oscar and Teddy, in September 2024. Just a week before their wedding, Jodie was told that her mum’s health had declined and that it was unlikely she would survive to see her only daughter get married.

The dedicated care team at St Michael’s Hospice in Hereford pulled together a beautiful wedding blessing in just 18 hours, enabling Chelle to see Jodie and Joe tie the knot – a feat Jodie describes as “amazing”.

Now Jodie is campaigning to encourage people to donate and fundraise for their local hospices, as only about a third of the vital care and support they provide is funded by the NHS.

Jodie is so glad to now have “all of my memories of that day with her there, being so happy and so content”, she told PA Real Life.

“For the whole family, we just feel incredibly grateful to the hospice and just so happy that those memories include her.”

Chelle had no obvious symptoms of cancer before her diagnosis. She had had a runny nose, which doctors thought was because of a deviated septum, but during a surgery to correct the suspected deviated septum, surgeons discovered a tumour.

“It was, unfortunately, a very aggressive sort of melanoma called mucosal melanoma,” Jodie said.

“She had to have surgery to remove the tumour, and that didn’t really work. They weren’t able to get all of it because of where it was –  it had spread up towards her eye and her brain, and to get all of it would be quite invasive.

“They did as much as they could, but obviously they didn’t get all of it, and it ended up spreading to other parts of her body quite quickly.

“(She went through) different rounds of treatment, like immunotherapy, radiotherapy, she even tried, in the end, chemo, but the side-effects were just really awful. The quality of her life at that point was very poor.

“So in the end she just decided that it wasn’t worth continuing down any of those roads, because it didn’t seem as though we were getting any sort of positive results, which is when she went into St Michael’s Hospice.”

At the end of June 2024, Chelle sought care from St Michael’s Hospice for pain management. After staying at the Hereford hospice for about eight weeks, she returned home at the end of August. At the end of September her health deteriorated so she went back into the hospice for end-of-life care.

“She was very athletic: she ran, she loved to go on walking and camping holidays with my dad and their dog. She was a grandma and she was so helpful, so supportive, very, very caring,” Jodie said.

“She just wanted to be near me and be with us, helping me to look after my little boy.

“She was a lot of fun, really full of life.”

While Jodie and Joe had organised their wedding for the end of September 2024, a week before the big day they got a call asking them to come to the hospice immediately, as Chelle’s condition had deteriorated and it was feared she was at the end of her life.

“We got the call on the Friday to say she was really unwell, and we had to come now. We drove up from Bristol within a couple of hours to be with her. She was so poorly, and she’d deteriorated so quickly. It was just a real shock, we were all so emotional.

“But then, obviously, we knew that we needed to organise a wedding so that she’d be there.”

Thanks to a massive effort from staff at the hospice and from Jodie and Joe’s families, the following morning the couple had a wedding blessing in the garden of the hospice.

Obviously, the couple had not planned to hold a wedding that weekend. Jodie had some summer dresses in her suitcase, but Joe had to dash out to buy some clothes appropriate for a summer garden wedding.

Joe’s mum and grandmother gathered flowers to make arrangements and bouquets, Joe’s aunt baked a wedding cake for them to cut, and the hospice beautifully decorated an outdoor space for the blessing, and cleared the room next to Chelle’s for a reception with tea, coffee and cake.

“The following morning then, I came into the room with mum, and we got ready together, which was lovely,” Jodie said.

“Her room actually had a walkway that came out of it on to the pontoon where we ended up getting married, so it was almost like a ready-made aisle for us.

“The hospice had arranged all the chairs with bunting all around and lots of ribbons and everything, so it looked like a proper wedding ceremony.”

Jodie’s mum and dad, brother and sister-in-law, her grandmother, Joe’s parents and his grandmother all attended the intimate ceremony the following morning, held in glorious summer sunshine.

“I was able to walk down the aisle with my dad and my little boy, and we had music playing, and then I arrived at the pontoon with Joe waiting there,” Jodie continued.

“The spiritual leader from the hospice then ran the ceremony for us.

“It just felt like a proper wedding. It was really lovely.”

In the end, Chelle was well enough to make it to the wedding a week later, and the family went out for a meal in a pub near where she grew up, to celebrate – “which was obviously even more special, that we got two celebrations with her”, Jodie said.

Less than two months later, on September 23, 2024, Chelle died.

Of the hospice team who cared for her mum, Jodie said: “They are just amazing. They did so much for all of us. Not just mum, the whole family.

“Some people might think hospices are sad places where people simply go to die, but in reality they make an incredible effort to create a positive, peaceful, and supportive environment, not only for the person who is ill but also for their family.”

Hospices provide vital end-of-life care across the UK, and offer support services for family members of terminally-ill patients. However, only about a third of hospice funding comes from the NHS, so the rest has to be raised from donations, fundraising and charity shops, and Jodie is urging people to donate where they can, including leaving gifts in their wills to enable hospices to continue their essential work.

“Me and my partner, last Sunday, ran the Cardiff half marathon for the hospice – we were part of a big team of people who all ran for the hospice,” Jodie said.

“There were about 20 of us in the end, and we raised over £20,000 for the hospice, which was amazing.

“But that’s probably just a drop in the ocean of the amount that they actually need to continue providing the level of care that they do for their patients, and the vast array of services that they provide as well.

“People doing as much as they can to support their local hospice is vitally important.”

To find out more about Hospice UK’s campaign to encourage support and donations for hospice care, visit: www.thisishospicecare.org.uk.