Cancer victim, 17, who asked for ballgown funeral

A TEENAGE cancer victim spent her final days planning her own funeral.

Schoolgirl Jennifer Wilson, 17, had spent almost three years battling a rare form of the disease.

At first she thought she had beaten it but it returned even stronger than before and doctors told her she did not have much time left.

So Jennifer told her mother exactly how she wanted her funeral to go, even down to what the guests would wear.

Sylvia Wilson, 50, said: "Jennifer said, 'Mum, I don't want this to be a drab occasion, I want everyone in pink.'

"She picked out her favourite ballgown, from a school Christmas dance, to be dressed in in her coffin and she picked the songs and a poem to be read.

"She even decided whether to be buried or cremated and which church and graveyard she preferred.

"My daughter decided everything that would happen. Those were the hardest questions to ask her, because we'd never even discussed the possibility of a funeral before.

"But it's so nice to know that every part of the day will be exactly what she would have wanted – because she told me."

Jennifer, from Cupar in Fife, first fell ill two and a half years ago. Doctors diagnosed a rare form of ovarian cancer.

She underwent an operation to remove an ovary and her fallopian tube and had six months of chemotherapy.

Her mother said: "She was very positive. Jennifer never complained. There was no self-pity with her."

The operation proved a success and Jennifer was told she was free of cancer in April 2008.

She started making plans for her future and was going to go to art college.

However, her joy turned out to be short-lived and she was told the cancer had returned in January last year when a tumour was found on her abdomen.

After being told the devastating news she posted a message on her page on social networking site Bebo. She wrote: "Life is so cruel."

Jennifer, a pupil at Bell Baxter High School, had to have more chemotherapy and a stem-cell transplant, and was forced to spend six weeks in isolation, unable to see her family.

After all that, on the day she was taken home, she was told the cancer was still there.

Doctors at first gave her months to live, but the prediction kept getting shorter and shorter.

Her parents, Sylvia and Chris, 53, gave up work to become full-time carers. But when doctors found another tumour the family had to face the fact that Jennifer had just days left.

She spent her final two weeks in Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, surrounded by her parents, sister Joanne, 13, and brother Christopher, 15.

There, she planned out her funeral, requesting songs Rule The World by Take That and Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Judy Garland.

A family friend will read the teenager's favourite poem, Daffodils by William Wordsworth, at St John's Church, Cupar, tomorrow.

Jennifer loved pink and had been planning a pink-themed 18th birthday party on 25 April.

But when she found out she wouldn't make the celebration, she instead asked everyone to wear that colour for her funeral.

Her mum said: "She deserved that birthday party because she's been through so much with her illness.

"We were so sad she couldn't make it but I expect all the people that would have come will be at her funeral service. The church will be full.

"Jennifer will be missed so much by everyone, she was a brave girl and had a great future ahead of her."