The Wedding

It’s that time of year: Wedding Season.  My friends are in their late twenties and early thirties and everyone left and right is beginning their forevers with someone they love.  Timile’s cousin, Brian was getting married in Washington DC this weekend.  Brian and I had become pretty good friends because whenever Timile and I would come to the Hampton Roads area, we would stay at his house and talked about a lot of things such as relationships that he and I had both been in and just what plans were for the future.  I was happy to see him marry someone who seems to compliment him very well.

Weddings make me think a lot of things the last few years.  When one of Timile’s best friends got married in December of 2010, all I could think about was my future with Timile and the little girl she was carrying under the red dress she wore as a bridesmaid.  When one of my best friends got married a few months later in Atlanta, my thoughts were about my family and how much I wish that we could have a normal life wondering why things had to be so difficult.  The next summer when my former roommate and his wife to be tied the knot I was happy that they finally got it together and wished for them to have what Timile and I once had.

I had plans of marrying Timile years ago.  I had a ring priced for her in December of 2008.  1.76 carats in the middle, white gold, modern cut, and the diamond studded wedding band interlocked through a hookup for under $5,000.  It seems like every time I started thinking about us getting married things went awry.  I’d get let go from a job, business would dry up, an interview that was knocked out of the park with a hell of a referral wouldn’t pan out.  We would get into arguments, well they were more like Timile venting her frustration about our situations quite often.  She even went as far as letting me know about someone she’d stopped talking to when we started dating who was now married and in a nutshell the life they had could have been hers.  Yeah, that made me feel like shit, but I understood and was doing the best that I could.

Looking back, I know there was a reason we didn’t get married.  If so, very few occupations would have had the kind of insurance to pay for the six weeks in maternity and the months of chemo treatments.  Timile would have passed away and on top of a child and student loans, I’d be paying off medical bills forever.  Even after Timile had Cydney, we talked about getting married but we couldn’t just due to insurance purposes.

This wedding the other day had me thinking about my daughter as well my own life.  Seeing the bride walk down the aisle welling up with tears as she was arm and arm with her father I couldn’t help but think about the day that I am that man with my daughter.  I’d probably be in tears myself, especially with Cydney.    Knowing her mother is looking down, that this little girl who was my life and it was just her and I will be living the rest of hers with someone else as well as a myriad of other emotions.  As scary as all of that sounds, I know it will be a glorious day and I will drown my sorrows that night.

The wedding made me think about my own future.  I have not even the slightest clue what that may be.  Do I think I’ll get married one day?  I do.  Do I know to who?  Haven’t the slightest.  I’m going to be all the way honest and say that my prediction is that its someone I already know or have known as an acquaintance.  I don’t think too much about that however weddings tend to conjure up such thoughts.  Well whoever it is would have to be incredible with Cydney.

When it was time for the garter toss, I tried to stay under the radar and not be called out to catch it.  I thought it would be really weird if I caught it and “The next one to get married” was of all people the former fiance of the family.  I almost made it, too.  At the last minute, the tables of family turned around and said “Chad, get up there!”  I responded “Nah, I got Cydney and she’s getting tired.”

“Oh, we’ll hold Cydney for you.”  Reluctantly, I got up.  I don’t like awkward moments so I went along with it, but I didn’t position myself to catch the garter.  I posted on Facebook and said jokingly “That awkward moment when you hide during the garter toss and you get called out by your former fiance’s family to get up there…”  A response from someone from my church said it all: …it is the promise of love and happily ever after that moved them…awkward yes, but you’ve got chapters to write still…

Very true.