With tears streaming down his face, Patrick Holland saw his dying daughter in a way he didn’t dare dream.
For just a few minutes, she wasn’t the frail, sick Annie he had watched suffer for the majority of her 25 years on earth.
On this day, the invasive tubes that sustained her tiny body were hidden behind the glorious white gown she had carefully chosen, her blonde curls flowed over the scars from countless surgeries and her delicate cheeks, softly blushed with powder, glowed with a natural rose he could tell was warming her from within.
This was a day for making memories that will stay with Mr Holland long after his darling Annie is gone.
“You look beautiful Annie,” he said through tears, hugging her tight and kissing her cheek.
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Beaming Annie chimed back: “You even wore a suit, what more could I ask?”
Annie, who has endured a lifetime’s worth of surgeries, setbacks, and profound agony, had been approved for voluntary assisted dying.
She is fighting tooth and nail to stay alive.
She chose VAD not because she is giving up, but because she doesn’t want to face a slow, agonising, unavoidable death when her body finally gives way.
For now, though, she is intent on making memories, ticking off dreams on her bucket list – or what she affectionately calls her ‘F***-it List’.
“I never thought I would be doing this so it feels so odd, but it just makes me feel like a princess,” Annie said during the special private fitting at Adelaide Bridal Collective organised۔
“I don’t need a man, so it’s all good,” she joked, finding light in her loneliness.
“I always said that I didn’t want to get married or have a wedding and I almost think it was just so I felt better about it, the fact that it won’t happen for me.”
Every day is a battle for life for Annie who suffers from Autoimmune Autonomic Ganglionopath – a rare disease where her immune system attacks her autonomic nervous system.
While it’s not always fatal, in Annie’s case the diagnosis came too late. She is one infection away from sepsis, one feeding tube malfunction from starvation, one bone crumble from suffocation.
Even during her makeup and hair sitting, Annie had to pause to inject her tiny frail frame with potent drugs just to breathe through the pain.
“Trying on a wedding dress is not just for me, I think it’s a rite of passage for your whole family,” Annie explains as she looks through the racks of gowns.
“You have your children and you want to see them have their 18th, their 21st, watching them get married, I didn’t have any of those things. So it’s nice to be able to give my family that experience and a positive memory.
“It’s important for Dad. Usually the preparations are all about the girls, women, your mum but walking a daughter down the aisle, that’s the one part the father gets to do that’s so special.
“Like I always say, ‘when I’m gone I’m gone’. I will be happy and peaceful but it’s everyone else that continues to live on and feel sad so to be able to leave them with a memory and something to talk about and pictures of this day, that is something happy and it is really really special.”
Annie had a rough Christmas, in and out of hospital with complications from her illness and infections.
She is due soon to have life-threatening surgery for total teeth extraction and bone graft because her jaw is crumbling.
“When you’re unwell and you’re not guaranteed tomorrow there is a lot of stress that you’re not going to make it, but I feel relieved that I got to do this,” she said.
“When I have bad days I can look back on this day and feel happy and smile and have a really good memory.
“I did it, I made it, and I got to do it when I feel like me. When you’re unwell you lose all those parts of you that really make you feel like who you are.
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“Today I feel like the old Annie. I can see past my illness and I can see me like the person I really, truly, actually am, instead of focusing on what has been taken away from me.
It’s more than just trying on a dress, it’s like a whole moment and I feel like I got my moment.
“I just feel like a normal 25-year-old.”