Young widow walks to raise money for disease that killed husband day after wedding

A young widow is walking over 560 kilometres in remembrance of her husband who died a day after the U.K. couple’s wedding.

Jonathan Thomas died in October 2015 after a short battle with bile duct cancer. The 30-year-old lived with ulcerative colitis, which led to his cancer diagnosis. According to Cancer Research UK, one in 200 people with ulcerative colitis develop bile duct cancer.

Sian Thomas, 28, told Global News that the couple began to plan their wedding last September when Jonathan received his terminal diagnosis.

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The ceremony wasn’t all that they had planned for: there were no flowers or a bridal party, and Sian wore jeans and a T-shirt instead of the dress she had bought for the wedding.

“Even as I was organizing our wedding, [I realized] these things just aren’t that important. The only reason why we wanted to do it was so that our friends and family could be there and he could see them, but actually the flowers and the cake really do not matter at all,” she said.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "Even as I was organizing our wedding, [I realized] these things just aren't that important. The only reason why we wanted to do it was so that our friends and family could be there and he could see them, but actually the flowers and the cake really do not matter at all," she said.

What did matter were the promises they exchanged with each other.

“He was really worried in the morning that he wouldn’t have the strength to get through it because he was so weak. But he managed to repeat back all the sentences that he had to say,” she said. “It was amazing.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "He was really worried in the morning that he wouldn't have the strength to get through it because he was so weak. But he managed to repeat back all the sentences that he had to say," she said. "It was amazing."

After the ceremony, he fell asleep and never woke up.

Oct. 22 will mark one year since Jonathan’s death and Sian says the long trek from Jonathan’s hometown in Wales to Celtic Park in Glasgow will be the “perfect” way to honour her late husband.

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“Jonathan had done other similar charity challenges with friends,” she said. “Ulcerative colitis is a horrible condition. He was in a lot of pain for a lot of the time … but he absolutely loved doing these challenges. So we wanted to do something like that to kind of carry that on in his memory.”

Sian and her team still have a week and a half of walking left and have already raised over £7,400 (around C$12,000) in support of Crohns & Colitis U.K. and the charitable arm of the Celtic Football Club, which was Jonathan’s favourite team.

“Finishing in Glasgow will be really emotional as we come to the first anniversary,” she said. “But we’re trying to have lots of laughs and we’re talking about lots of great memories and finding things that he’d find funny to try and just enjoy it. That’s what he would’ve wanted.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "Finishing in Glasgow will be really emotional as we come to the first anniversary," she said. "But we're trying to have lots of laughs and we're talking about lots of great memories and finding things that he'd find funny to try and just enjoy it. That's what he would've wanted."

According to Crohn’s and Colitis Canada, one in every 150 Canadians lives with either disease – the highest rate worldwide.