on an anniversary

It was an overcast morning and nerves woke me up before everyone else.  Christina was in the bed next to me and I crept out of the room and into the livingroom, pulled back the curtains, tried slow deliberate breathing to calm myself.  It had been a terrible week, but now I was going to marry Mike.  This was a good thing, a happy thing, but I was nervous.  Not about marrying him, I knew that would be the easy part, it was just everything else.  He was still asleep just a few feet away in the Inn next door.  I wanted to sneak out the front door of our suite and into the Inn, climb up the stairs and lay next to him, tell him that I was nervous so he could pull me in, help me back to sleep, tell me that there was no reason to be.  But I let myself keep to the tradition of separation and stayed on my side of the wall. 

I crawled back into bed and ruffled around enough to wake Christina up.  She rolled over, sleepily assessing the situation, "Are you awake awake or going back to sleep?"  I wanted more sleep, I wanted to be calm, but it wasn't going to happen.  "I'm sorry, I know it's early, but I am awake awake."  And with that she was out of bed and into her bag and over to the stereo with a cd that started blasting "Going to the Chapel." 

I can't think of our wedding without thinking about the days before the wedding.  Sometimes I look at the photos and feel a pang of guilt that we are there smiling and laughing, enjoying ourselves.  I want to slip into that photo and hug my August 21st self, tell her that the next few months will be hard, so it is alright to be happy now.  I wonder if years from now I will be able to separate the two.  We lost one of the most important people in our world.  We had a wedding.  But, for now, it still feels like one sentence: we lost Mike's mom and were married a few days later. 

Today, I will try and separate them.  Today I will celebrate one year of marriage with my Mike, I will be thankful he found me, that we have each other.  Today I will love this day. 



some alone time minutes after the ceremony