What Were You Going To Say, Dad?  

I had a really tough walk down the aisle on my wedding day...

In fact, my entire engagement had been less than peachy. It began with DH & I living in two different states, included a bout of severe seasonal affective disorder on my part, and ended with what DH would tell you is the longest holdout in premarital history.

The stress of planning a wedding--largely on my own--had gotten to me by the time I slipped on my gown (which by that time, 10 months after I'd purchsed it, I already hated). My parents, bless their hearts, paid for everything; but because my grandmother and aunts had basically planned every detail of my mother's wedding, she wanted to make sure I got to plan every detail of my own. And I did. I organized everything from the flowers to the menu to the music.

Ahhhh, the music. This is what leads me to today's post (because otherwise, it's relatively random, considering my anniversary was some four months ago). It was when I heard the song I'd chosen for walking down the aisle--The Sleeping Beaty Waltz, by Tchaikovsky--and saw the big, grand doors of the church open in front of me that I absolutely lost it.

DH later told me that when he saw my face at the end of that long aisle, he thought for a moment he'd have to chase after me. I know he's not lying; I've seen the pictures (none of which made it into our wedding album). I look frightened and overwhelmed. In truth, the emotions of the day hit me like a ton of bricks the moment I stepped into the sanctuary. Up until that point, my wedding had been about dotting the "i"'s and crossing the "t"'s, not about the union of two people in love. The very idea that here was a man who wanted to love me, honor me, and cherish me all the days of my life was something that had gotten lost in the shuffle. Confronting the enormity of that love in just 100 feet was a daunting task.

As my father dragged me down the aisle--for that's what it felt like, as my feet had turned to stone the minute the first strains of my song began to play--I turned to him for comfort.

"Daddy," I whispered. "Tell me a joke."

He turned to me with moist eyes.

"I can't tell you anything right now," he replied. "The only words I have would make us both cry even harder."

My dad is not an emotional guy. I've only seen him cry once in his entire life, when he learned his mother had died (four days after she'd been cremated, but that is another story). So seeing him on the brink of tears was wholly foreign to me.

Over the past five years, I've asked him multiple times what he couldn't say to me on that walk-- the last time he was the most important man in my life. He claims he doesn't remember, and maybe that's the truth. There's a lot I don't remember from that overwhelming, frantic day either. But I wish I knew. Because instead of being words he's never been able to remember, they'd be words I know I'd never want to forget.