Eight family guests flew in Friday night for the next morning's wedding, the beds set up and clothed with sheets and blankets and the towels stacked and the groceries bought. And the water heater broke, so the wedding day brought cold showers all around, and no one grumbled and everyone smiled and looked beautiful at the temple, radiant and soft as the light through the stained glass and the zinnias and roses on the grounds. The officiator instructed the groom and bride after vows to cleave to each other and to labor together in love, and that the groom may now communicate his love with a kiss, and the bride quipped grinning that he was a good communicator. Soft laughter rolling through the temple. My predominant emotion at weddings is doom, for marriage has brought so much sadness and pain and grief to me and to so many I love, the termination of built hopes and the loss of future memories the absence of whispers and touch, and I struggle to want to celebrate. I wished them luck and congratulations, wanting to believe theirs could work. My children have chosen well, and I encourage them often to just keep talking and giving, come what may. This white-veiled wedding has brought the family together in hope and love, at least, and that is a good thing. I have noticed a young woman sitting graveside in the green expanse of Larkin cemetery, morning after morning. Sometimes she is lying on the patch of new sod, a white bouquet in the vase, and I sense her black veil of mourning. You know you have a gift for her, came the thought, and I slid Megan Devine's book into a zip loc bag with a note: A gift for you in your grief… to leave by the bouquet for her to find, but she lay there again, sleeping wrapped in her blanket against Fall's chill, so I secreted my gift under the windshield wiper of her blue Jetta and tiptoed away, glad for the anonymity that might ease the gift-giving and avoid the awkwardness of a stranger's strange approach. The man had died at 28, leaving behind two children and, presumably, this grieving young woman. I wonder if I will see her again sitting graveside. Not today, as I returned from the happy wedding, stuffed with Brick Oven pizza, returning to do what I do best, eradicating weeds and pruning dead wood, the blooming geraniums belying my aching arthritic hands. Their infirmities did not allow Mom and Dad to attend the wedding festivities, but Mom called and pleaded and Scott came on this Labor Day Saturday and brought a new water heater when he could have not cared and made us wait until Tuesday, but he came, and the water heater was under warranty, saving us $2,200, so he said. And $900 later everyone is happily but tiredly home, enjoying sprays of warm water, languid on the couch, munching Oreos, the couple married off, off on their adventure, having stepped into the mystery of marriage.
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