His last wish was to plant a tree, but when Randy Nickerson’s illness took a turn for the worse, it looked as if that dream might die along with him.
By Catherine Litt
Kamloops Daily News
There was a moment, as she watched the gardener push soil into two holes Monday afternoon, when the weight of the world seemed to lift from Betty McIntrye’s shoulders.
It was done.
Through the fog of emotions, through the grief and the tears and the fear and the heartache of the past days, it was done. A mother’s promise was made, and kept.
“I feel OK now,” she said.
“He just wanted them in the ground so he knows they’re going to be living.”
It had been less than a month since McIntyre’s son, Randy Nickerson, told her of his wish.
Randy was dying of cancer. For 10 months he’d put up the fight of his life, but he was losing the battle; everyone knew it. Doctors said it was a matter of days before the illness would take him.
So he started making plans.
In the time he had left, he had one last wish: he wanted to plant a tree on the grounds of Marjorie Willoughby Snowden Memorial Hospice Home in Kamloops where he was living out his final days.
As he lay in bed, weak from his cancer and aware the end was near, Randy thought about his years in logging.
He’d always loved the forest, the way the trees moved in the breeze. The forest could be cruel and unforgiving to loggers – he’d seen too many of his friends die on the job – but it was also undeniably beautiful.
Even now, his five-foot-eight-inch frame a mere reflection of the hulking body that felled trees and drove trucks along remote roads carved through the forest, Randy still felt like a logger. The thought of his family dedicating a bench, as so many other families had done for patients of the hospice house, seemed so contrary to who he was and how he had spent his life.
But a beautiful weeping cypress . . . when his family saw it blowing in the breeze, they would know his spirit was there.
“It has to be planted tomorrow,” a desperately ailing Randy told his mother on Sunday, March 16. “It has to go into the ground tomorrow, it has to go into the ground before I die.”
Betty McIntyre made a promise to her son. She would make sure his tree was planted.
And so, on cloudy grey St. Patrick’s Day, Betty McIntyre gathered the family – Randy’s sisters Barb and Chris, his brother Victor, his stepfather Ed, and several nieces – outside the hospice house to plant not just one tree, but two: a weeping cypress and a weeping spruce.
Randy’s condition had deteriorated so badly over the weekend, he remained in his hospice room asleep, unaware of the ceremony taking place a few metres outside his window.
“These will be a comfort to other families,” said gardener John Moslin as he dug two holes and lowered the cypress and spruce trees.
“I think when people come here, they’ve sort of accepted the fact that they’re dying, but it’s hard on the family to come to visit. And these will be a comfort.”
Randy’s family watched as Moslin carefully covered the holes with dirt.
Then Randy’s 10-year-old niece Ashley reached into a plastic bag and pulled out tiny Popsicle-stick crosses she had made. Ashley and her cousins gently pushed them into the ground at the base of the trees.
Betty McIntrye watched her granddaughters and smiled.
She watched the tree branches move in the breeze.
“Randy likes the way the weeping trees are free,” she said.
“I don’t think he feels free right now.”
For Randy’s sister Barb, the trees were a fitting legacy. The fact that Randy wanted them needed no explanation.
“I think to him it symbolizes the continuing of life,” she said.
“A tree will grow and live for a long time, and he was in forestry. It was a big part of his life.”
When it was all done and the weeping cypress and weeping spruce were in the ground, Randy’s mother took a deep breath.
For days now, it had been her mission to deliver on Randy’s wish. Her son had asked for a tree to be planted before he died and there was nothing that would stop her from making that happen.
And nothing did.
An inexplicable urgency had driven her to get the trees into the ground. She knew there was nothing she could do to cure her son’s cancer but at least, as a mother, she could deliver on a promise to plant a tree.
Ten hours after the cypress and spruce were lowered into the garden, Randy Nickerson lost his battle with cancer.
He died at 3 a.m. in his sleep at Marjorie Willoughby Snowden Memorial Hospice Home.
He was 47 years old.
Posted on March 22, 2008
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