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As time runs short, wedding is bittersweet

He knew his wife wouldn't live to see their daughter's March wedding. So two nurses organized a ceremony in the hospital.

By JAMES THORNER
Published January 2, 2006

ZEPHYRHILLS - Helen Jones was in the last stages of stomach cancer at East Pasco Medical Center in Zephyrhills. The morphine to manage her pain tugged her in and out of consciousness.

But there she was, in the hospital's garden chapel, wearing an oxygen mask and a black, gold-trimmed robe.

She was alive, surrounded by her family, and her youngest daughter was getting married, on Christmas Eve no less.

The teenage wedding singer trilled Unchained Melody .

And through the haze of painkillers and the rush of bottled oxygen, the 64-year-old matriarch seized her husband's hand and squeezed as hard as she could from her wheelchair.

"She was letting me know she understood what was happening," Cornelius Jones says.

Even if he was not inclined toward such beliefs before, Jones now believes a divine hand touched the wedding chapel that day.

How else to explain the two nurses who organized a first-class wedding in four hours and made a dying woman's dream come true?

Dec. 23, he conferred with doctors and intensive care nurses and contemplated life without his wife of 32 years.

One of his regrets, he told hospital staffers, was that Helen Jones wouldn't make it to March, to see their daughter Jennifer's wedding to fiance Jason Oliver.

Nurse Tracy Combs whirled into action. Within hours, Publix was baking the couple's wedding cake. Sharon's Country Flowers crafted corsages and wedding centerpieces, all made of hypoallergenic silk to avoid harming the frail Helen Jones.

Chaplain Doug Higgins performed the Christmas Eve ceremony under an arbor in the hospital chapel. A reception followed from 4 to 6 p.m. in an intensive care waiting room.

Another nurse, Vicki Buchanan, enlisted her daughter to sing, a secretary to play the organ and another staffer to snap photos.

The hospital called the bride and groom and requested they arrive well-dressed Saturday. Gold and burgundy would be the color scheme. The Joneses' relatives and grandkids jumped on airplanes at short notice.

"I had worried mom wouldn't make it. The call was a blessing to me, an answer to my prayers," Jennifer Jones says.

Cornelius Jones, 79, has seen a lot of good and bad in his life.

Raised in Birmingham, Ala., Jones was a childhood friend of Martin Luther King Jr., before he became a civil rights legend. King was then known by his birth name Michael, later changed by his father to Martin.

"I still called him Michael up to his death," Jones says.

He and his wife worked as executives in the pharmaceutical industry in New York and retired to Zephyrhills' Lake Bernadette neighborhood in May. Then terminal cancer struck.

But Cornelius Jones racks his brain to remember when he was more touched by a gesture of kindness. During the 20-minute ceremony, his eyes welled with tears.

"It was one of the most heartwarming things I've experienced," he says. "They would not accept a dime from us."

Bess Pentecost, Cornelius Jones' sister from Birmingham, was amazed by the quality of the event.

"They could not have been better wedding planners had they had five years to plan it," Pentecost says.

Nurse Combs couldn't stay long after the Christmas Eve nuptials. She had to dash back to Lakeland to wrap her family's presents.

But before she left, she stopped by Mrs. Jones' room in intensive care to wish her patient a Merry Christmas.

Mrs. Jones opened her eyes, recognized the good Samaritan and inquired after Combs' name.

"I said, "Tracy,"' Combs says. "She said, "I'll remember that."'

The day after Christmas, Mrs. Jones' family checked her out of the hospital. They wanted her to spend her last days at home.

The Jones family keeps a stack of photos to remember a wedding that was simultaneously heartwarming and heart wrenching. In many, Combs and Buchanan smile from the frames.

The two nurses insist any joy they brought the family was amply repaid by the joy they themselves felt.

Says Combs: "Vicki and I said, "That was our Christmas, that was our gift."'

[Last modified January 2, 2006, 02:30:25]