See the beautiful wedding video of the man who was buried on the day he was supposed to get married.

Thom Dunn
08.21.15

How do you start a story about a man who was buried on his wedding day?

For now, I'll start with the facts. Solomon Chau died in his sleep on Aug. 17, 2015 — eight months after being diagnosed with liver cancer.

That was four days ago as of this writing.

This time last year, Chau and his beloved fiancee, Jennifer Carter, were looking forward to their wedding day, which was scheduled for Aug. 22, 2015.

That's tomorrow, as of this writing. It's hard to know the proper verb tense when you're talking about death. I mean that literally, though it is a strangely apt metaphor befitting of the subject matter.

The point is this: Aug. 22, 2015, is the day of Sol's funeral. In another world, it would have been the start of his married life with Jenn.

Jennifer Carter's wedding dress. Photo by Red Earth Photography. Used with permission.

I could start this story at the beginning, when Sol and Jenn first met.

According to Sol's obituary, it was pure happenstance that Jenn was visiting a friend at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, in October 2007 and that she would wind up at a house party celebrating Sol's 19th birthday.

It was less happenstantial that Jenn would catch Sol's eye amidst the flurry of the evening. And it was absolutely deliberate when he took a more-than-three-hour bus ride around Lake Ontario during a snowstorm in December just to show up at her door and ask her out.

This is the love-conquers-all version, where the happy not-quite-a-couple-yet overcomes adversity — in this case, an actual storm — just to end up in each others' arms.

Jennifer and Solomon together. Photo taken from the GoFundMe campaign run by Solomon's childhood friend.

I could start their story somewhere in the middle, with the epic flash mob Sol used to ask Jenn to be his wife.

It was the spring of 2014, as the obituary tells it. Sol organized a flash mob in the plaza beneath Toronto's CN Tower, complete with dolphin balloons to match Jenn's tattoo in honor of her late sister.

There'd be an intermission, of course; a chance for the audience to catch their breath and revel in the couple's joyous day before the tragic ending in Act III.

Or I could begin closer to the end, with the day that Sol was diagnosed with cancer.

As explained in the couple's GoFundMe campaign, the news came in December 2014, and in those 48 frantic hours, Sol was diagnosed and rushed right into surgery. The doctors were able to successfully remove the tumor that was poisoning his liver. It was scary, sure, and Sol was weak. But then the New Year came, and things were looking up.

The tumor was gone. The cancer wasn't.

The couple's wedding rings. Photo by Red Earth Photography. Used with permission.

The truth is, no matter where I start the story, it still ends the same way: Sol died Aug. 17, 2015.

I wish I could tell you about the power of love, or Sol's miraculous recovery on their wedding day. But I told you up top that that wasn't how this story went. Real life is ugly, and cancer doesn't care for poetry or happy endings.

But what kind of storyteller would I be if I didn't save the best part of their story for last?

You see, Solomon Chau and Jennifer Carter did get to enjoy 128 precious days as husband and wife.

Jenn and Sol's first look on their wedding day. Photo by Red Earth Photography. Used with permission.

It was March 2015 when Sol's cancer returned — just three months after his initial diagnosis and the emergency surgery they thought had been successful. This time, he and Jenn were told that the ending was inevitable, just as I told you.

Less than two weeks after Sol's fateful diagnosis, the city of Toronto rallied together behind the couple and surprised them with an unforgettable wedding on April 11, 2015.

Jenn and Sol with their bridal party. Photo by Red Earth Photography. Used with permission.

In just three days, more than $50,000 was raised on GoFundMe to throw the couple a lavish wedding, and otherwise-expensive wedding vendors like Boundless Wedding video (who shared this story with me) and Red Earth Photography and Liberty Entertainment Group volunteered their services free of charge to give Sol and Jenn the happy day they deserved. The events of the day took place across Toronto, everywhere from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel to Toronto's picturesque Casa Loma castle and featured a brief reprise of Sol's flash-mob proposal.

All 70 guests kept their spirits high despite the tragic elephant in the room. Because sometimes, that's the only thing you can do.

And even though Sol was buried on the day his wedding was supposed to take place, Jenn will always have memories of their happy wedding day.

And I'll leave you with this, something to think about:

Some people joke about their " Kardash-iversary" — 73 days after the wedding, at which point their marriage has officially lasted longer than that of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries. I was recently married, and instead, I'll be thinking about our Sol-iversary. That will be in October (coincidentally, on Sol's birthday), 128 days after our own wedding — the amount of time that Sol and Jenn had together, and how grateful we all should be for every single day.

I didn't know of Solomon Chau until Thursday afternoon (which is today, or two days ago, depending how we're counting). I don't presume to know what legacy he would have liked to leave behind, and it would be a disservice if I wrote some cliche platitudes about life and love and death. What I can do is what I've done here, which is share his story, and hope that maybe Sol's story could bring some light into your life, too.

Sol is survived of course by his wife, Jennifer Carter, and his family has asked for any donations to be made to the Tim Horton's Children's Foundation or Temmy Latner Centre for Palliative Care.

human condition humanity and culture
More
First Book
First Book

$1 can lead to 1 million books for kids in need this holiday season

Courtesy of First Book

We take the ability to curl up with a good story for granted. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to books. For the 32 million American children growing up in low-income families, books are rare. In one low-income neighborhood in Washington, D.C., there is approximately one book for every 800 children. But children need books in their lives in order to do well in school and in life. Half of students from low-income backgrounds start first grade up to two years behind other students. If a child is a poor reader at the end of first grade, there's a 90% chance they're going to be a poor reader at the end of fourth grade.

In order to help close the literacy gap, First Book launched Give a Million, a Giving Tuesday campaign to put one million new, high-quality books in the hands of children. Since 1992, the nonprofit has distributed over 185 million books and educational resources, a value of more than $1.5 billion. Many educators lack the basic educational necessities in their classrooms, and First Book helps provide these basic needs items.

Keep Reading Show less
reading first book giving tuesday books child literacy
First Book
True
first-book

The suicide rate for kids ages 10-14 nearly tripled in the past decade. Why? And what can we do?

Image by Arifur Rahman Tushar from Pixabay

I was 10 when my uncle Doug took his own life. I remember my mom getting the phone call and watching her slump down the kitchen wall, hand over her mouth. I remember her having to tell my dad to come home from work so she could tell him that his beloved baby brother had hung himself.

Doug had lived with us for a while. He was kind, gentle, and funny. He was only 24 when he died.

My uncle was so young—too young—but not as young as some who end their lives. Youth suicide in the U.S. is on the rise, and the numbers—and ages—are staggering.

Keep Reading Show less
mental health mental illness psychology suicide suicide prevention depression
popular
Capital One
Capital One

A new development in Seattle is making affordable housing a priority for the city’s residents

Pavel Verbovski

Forrest doesn't mind admitting he needed a second chance. The 49-year-old had, at one point, been a member of the Army; he'd been married and had a support network. But he'd also run into a multitude of health and legal problems. He'd been incarcerated. And once he was released, he didn't know where he would go or what he would do. He'd never felt so alone.

But then, some hope. While working with Seattle's VA to obtain a place to live and a job, Forrest heard about Mercy Magnuson Place, a new development from Mercy Housing Northwest that would offer affordable homes to individuals and families who, like Forrest, needed help in the city's grueling rental market.

Forrest remembers not wanting to even go see the building because he didn't want to get his hopes up, but a counselor persuaded him. And when he learned that the development was a repurposed former military barracks — now a historic landmark — he knew he'd feel right at home.

Today, Forrest couldn't be happier. "I've got a 10-foot-high ceiling," he says. "I've got 7-foot windows. I look out onto a garden." His studio apartment, he says, has more space than he knows what to do with. For someone who's spent chunks of his life not having a place to call his own, the three closets that Forrest's apartment boasts are a grand luxury.

Keep Reading Show less
popular
True

Here are the ways your body changes when you’re pregnant that nobody talks about

Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash

Having a baby is like entering a fight club. The first rule of having a kid is don't talk about having a kid. New moms end up with weird marks on their bodies, but they don't talk about how they got there or why. They just smile as they tell other women motherhood is such a joy.

There are so many other things we don't talk about when it comes to pregnancy. Hearing about the veritable war zone your body turns into is enough to snap anyone out of the highest of baby fevers, which is why so many women probably keep the truth to themselves. But it's important to talk about the changes because it normalizes them. Here are some of the ways your body changes that your health textbook isn't going to cover.

Keep Reading Show less
popular