Moira Collette-Jean Legault had just awakened from a brain operation when she received some devastating news. She would most likely have about a year to live.
Tyler Scott Ferron, Ms. Legault’s partner of five years, rushed into her room at Vanderbilt University Medical Center right as the surgeon was delivering the prognosis.
It was a weekday in early May, and Mr. Ferron had left his shift as a maintenance technician at Brookdale Senior Living, a nursing home in Brentwood, Tenn., early. It was then that he asked Ms. Legault what she wanted to do in her final year.
Ms. Legault, 27, has a type of brain cancer called astrocytoma and was having a shunt placed in her head during the operation. She said she wanted to travel — that is, to go anywhere within driving distance since it wasn’t recommended for her to fly on a plane. A few weeks later, she started a GoFundMe account to raise money to cross off bullet points on her bucket list.
Her No. 1 wish was to marry the love of her life. “I said, ‘Let’s do it,’” recalled Mr. Ferron, also 27.
“I’m just trying to spend as many days as I can with this man,” Ms. Legault said.
Ms. Legault had known she wanted to spend her life with Mr. Ferron pretty much since they first met in February 2019 in Nashua, N.H.
“I don’t necessarily know if I believe in an afterlife or not, but it’s somewhat nice to know that if there is one, I’ll be there waiting,” Ms. Legault said.
They met while sifting through old vinyl records at Newbury Comics at Pheasant Lane Mall in Nashua.
Ms. Legault grew up in Littleton, Mass., and Mr. Ferron in Candia, N.H. The two towns are about an hour away from each other, and the mall is in between both towns. As teens, it was a meet-up spot, the one place, Ms. Legault said, where anything remotely interesting was happening.
Immediately, they bonded over their shared love of rock and jazz, as well as Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin — “the oldies stuff,” as Ms. Legault put it.
They hit it off and wandered around the mall for hours. But when they finished making the rounds through both floors, they didn’t yet want to part. Ms. Legault invited him to her apartment to see her newborn kitten, Beans.
That night, they shared their first kiss. From then on, they hung out almost every day. They built Legos together, painted, and visited quaint towns around New Hampshire’s White Mountains, where they snapped photos of street murals and autumn leaves. They also played lots of Mario games on their Nintendo Switch and GameCube.
“She’s just one of the kindest and sweetest people I’ve ever met,” Mr. Ferron said. Early in their relationship, she left him gifts like his favorite snacks (pumpkin pie and Chex Mix), flowers and “little sappy love notes,” she said. “He’s a teddy bear.”
“I’ve never met anybody like him,” Ms. Legault said. “He’s just full of not only fun facts, but just so intelligent, and I’m just so drawn to him.”
In June 2021, about two years into their relationship, the couple moved to Nashville, where they had found an affordable apartment along the Cumberland River. Ms. Legault worked remotely as an order entry manager for Kriss Law/Atlantic Closing & Escrow, a real estate company based in Needham, Mass. Mr. Ferron found work in property maintenance.
Though Ms. Legault is more of a recluse and spent most of her time working from home and playing with Beans and Mr. Ferron’s cat, Sterling, Mr. Ferron found a community of friends in Nashville that he had never really had in his hometown.
Ms. Legault considers those days to be some of “the best” of her life, adding that she wishes she could go back to that time.
But in February 2023, everything changed.
For as long as Mr. Ferron had known her, Ms. Legault had been experiencing painful headaches. In the months leading up to that February, it was getting worse, and she was suffering from severe vomiting. She made several trips to the emergency room.
“I always just ended up walking out with a big bill and no solution,” Ms. Legault said. “There were points where I was in a fetal position on the floor.”
That month, an M.R.I. scan revealed that she had a brain tumor in her frontal lobe that had been growing slowly over the years. A few months later, a doctor detected another tumor in her brain.
Through it all, Mr. Ferron was her rock. After returning home every day, he asked her if she needed anything: water, medication, an extra blanket. He cooked every night, did the dishes, and if she couldn’t eat because she was too sick, he’d put something in the fridge for later. He always ran home from work whenever she was really ill, and he’d always take her to her medical appointments.
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Ms. Legault’s prognosis kept getting worse, and a third tumor developed. To comply with her parents’ wishes, she moved into their basement in Littleton in May. Mr. Ferron wanted to be with her, so he followed her up North and moved into his grandparents’ home in Nashua.
Quitting his job and relocating “bankrupted” him, he said: “I had no other place to go.” Mr. Ferron is currently working in private maintenance while also trying to advance his writing career. In 2021, he self-published a novel called “The Reaper Chronicles” under the pseudonym F.T. Scott. The novel’s main character is loosely based on his own life as a child who spent years in a foster home and found it hard to fit in.
Leaving Nashville was tough for Mr. Ferron. “Finally, I did find a place where I fit in — great job, great co-workers and I really saw a future following that job.” But it was a sacrifice that was necessary. He knew he could find another job, but he said the opportunity to be with his soul mate was invaluable.
Ms. Legault was a strong support system for Mr. Ferron throughout the publishing process, offering feedback and encouragement. Now, as he works on a second novel, she still cheers him on.
“It’s always kind of been just the two of us against the world,” Mr. Ferron said. “I’m perfectly content just cuddling with her in bed, taking care of her, and we’ll put on a movie, or we’ll put on a Mario game together like we used to.”
When the couple decided to get married in May, they weren’t sure how they would do it. They had blown through their savings to pay for treatments, and in November, she left her job and her benefits were terminated. They weren’t sure how they could afford a wedding — even a simple one.
In June, Mr. Ferron discovered Wish Upon a Wedding, a nonprofit group that grants weddings and vow renewals to couples facing terminal illnesses. They contacted the organization, which connected them with Sophie Escoll, a 32-year-old publicist in Charlestown, Mass. Ms. Escoll had been planning a 200-person wedding in Newport, R.I., for August.
Three weeks before the wedding date, the couple called it off. Ms. Escoll wanted to make good use of the vendor services that had already been paid for. She was also a cancer survivor who has been free of ovarian cancer since 2021. So, when her wedding planner discovered Wish Upon a Wedding, Ms. Escoll saw an opportunity to pay it forward and help another couple begin their marriage.
“I had spent almost two years planning this crazy wedding that never came to fruition, and it felt like it would be another layer of loss, beyond the breakup of my relationship, to lose everything we had put into the wedding,” Ms. Escoll said. And luckily, Ms. Legault and Mr. Ferron were in the area. “The stars aligned,” said Lacey Wicksall, the organization’s executive director.
Almost $30,000 of transferable vendor services were donated to the couple, including the wedding planner and designer, Lindsey Shaktman of Mavinhouse Events, which is based in Ipswich, Mass.
The wedding was held on Nov. 7 at Amherst Woman’s Club in Amherst, Mass., in front of about 50 guests. Ashton Ferron, Mr. Ferron’s brother, led the ceremony. The couple did not get legally married because Ms. Legault did not want to pass the debt she incurred as a result of her cancer treatments to Mr. Ferron.
“It ended up being the most perfect day,” Ms. Legault said. The couple stayed at a hotel on Amherst College’s campus, and on the morning of the wedding, Ms. Legault met her stepmother, Cynthia Legault, and five bridesmaids at the venue. They got ready, had some doughnuts from Dunkin’, and slowly, guests started arriving.
Both their dads walked Ms. Legault down the aisle to “Wonderful Tonight” by Eric Clapton. For their first dance song, the couple danced to “Only You” by the Platters.
For Mr. Ferron, the highlight of the day was seeing Ms. Legault walk down the aisle. “From not knowing whether we’d get to that point, to six months later just seeing everything kind of come to fruition the way we wanted it — it was just a really surreal moment to finally see that happening,” he said.
Though Ms. Legault hasn’t received an updated prognosis, she underwent chemotherapy and radiation over the course of several months, and her three tumors are currently stable.
“One day at a time is kind of my mojo really, right now,” Ms. Legault said. “But I know that he would be here for me no matter how ill I got.”
On This Day
When Nov. 7, 2024
Where Amherst Woman’s Club, Amherst, Mass.
Something Borrowed Ms. Legault borrowed a dress that her stepmother had worn at her own vow renewal. Ms. Legault’s original wedding gown no longer fit her because she had gained 60 pounds from chemotherapy. “It was nice to feel pretty for a day,” Ms. Legault said.
An Old-Time Vibe For the ceremony, the couple went for a “rustic vibe,” Mr. Ferron said. “We’re not these big, ritzy and glamorous people. We like something that’s more homey, something that kind of embodied the music that we had bonded over.”
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