The Wedding

Barbara Abercrombie
Special to the Mirror 

   During the wedding I whispered to my daughter, “Caroline sure has better taste in women than she had in men.” 
   My daughter whispered back, “She finally just met the person she could really love.” 
   The woman Caroline found to love is beautiful, a doctor who works with HIV and AIDS patients, the kind of person you think of as a pure soul; when she listens to you her attention is one hundred percent, not muddied by ego or trying to please. A woman who, far more dignified and reserved than our friend Caroline, nevertheless burst into tears when her father, her very conservative, older father, raised his glass and toasted her at the reception with these words: “You have always made good choices, but this is one may be the best of all.” 
   We’ve known Caroline since she was three years old and lived next door to us. I remember driving her to kindergarten with my daughters, the Snoopy costume she wore every Halloween. I remember hearing her sister practice the flute through the open windows of their house, her mother’s Christmas cookies. I remember Caroline as a teenager, her boyfriends, the drama of her adolescence, and then she moved on to college, grew up to do important work in the world, and now finally she had found the right person to love and share her life with. So this day of the wedding was rich with thirty years of memories and a chance to reconnect with her family.
   It was not a wedding in the traditional sense of course, nor even a legal commitment — but in the true sense of the verb to wed: “to bind by close and lasting ties, to become united” this was Caroline’s wedding. Here was a couple who wanted their commitment to one another witnessed by the people they love, the close and lasting ties of their partnership strengthened by the unconditional love and presence of their families and closest friends. 
   Late autumn sun filtered through the eucalyptus trees as the minister read the vows they had written to one another. Caroline’s sister and brother-in-law played a flute and hand drum rendition of the Beatles “In My Life.” A friend recited a poem — “May the heron carry news of you to the heavens/And the salmon bring the sea’s blue grace...”
   The reception afterward was filled with toasts that either made you laugh or put a serious lump in your throat. One friend sang a few Russian folk songs as a toast. Another told the tale of introducing them to one another. And then the couple themselves danced — a full out rehearsed ballroom dance routine complete with dips and whirls to Ella Fitzgerald’s “Too Darn Hot.” 
   I’ve been to weddings where tempers were stretched thin, where the bride, groom and the mother of the bride appeared to be on the verge of a collective collapse. Weddings with three hundred guests, four-foot ice sculptures and ceremonies that resembled small coronations. But the best of weddings are about the heart, not the show. They cause us to think and reflect on our own relationships, our marriages or partnerships, our connections to our own families. You take a moment to realize what is truly important in this life: family and love, sacred ritual and celebration. And to renew in your heart your own vows, to remember what you have promised your partner or spouse. To realize there is nothing on earth more important than unconditional love. Love that nourishes and connects and sustains people. Love and partnerships that are not defined by someone else’s rules.