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May 24, 2005

'til death

I went to a wedding on Saturday evening.

It rained Friday and after it stopped raining the sky stayed gray, the clouds so low that if I stood on tiptoe and reached, I probably could have touched them. But Saturday. The late afternoon was beautiful, sunny, the sky filled with huge cumulus clouds, a warm breeze. I was early at the church and so passed some time looking at the gravestones in the churchyard, all too new to be very interesting. There was the stretch limousine in the church driveway. Then my friend C. and her friend S. arrived: the girls in their summer dresses.

The interior of the church was white and spare, also beautiful. C. and S. and I sat in the back and made desultory conversation about whether or not the groom would cry. The processional began. The bridesmaids; the maid of honor, hugely pregnant; the three ring bearers; and at last the bride, shining radiant in white, her blonde hair shining, her skin milk white, shining.

Once everyone was gathered at the altar, the minister launched into a sermon about how much better it is to be married than not be, one being the loneliest number and all. He took special emphasis with the pitfalls of singlehood: for example, did you know that if you are single and you fall down, there's no one there to catch you? (I guess the unmarried state also confers a certain amount of clumsiness.) He waxed so rhapsodical and for so long, in fact, that I started to wonder if he had a gaggle of bachelors hidden behind the vestibule door and was about to cue them to pop out and offer to marry all the single women, women who naturally would be thrilled to leave their lonely, accident-prone spinsterhood for the state of marital bliss.

As someone who sold the farm and is just leaving that state to venture on down the road as a Woman Alone, I didn't appreciate being reminded how much better the weather is back in the town I just came from. "I'm not liking this sermon so much," I whispered to C., who whispered back that hadn't heard a word since she automatically stops listening to "religious talk" once it starts, preferring instead to take in the scenery.

Well anyway, no prospective bridegrooms jumped out of Door Number One and the minister finally shut up, and then there was some singing and reading from the scriptures. And then the reason we were there (well, besides wanting to see The Dress)--the vows, and R. and MB. said to each other, in essence: Forever.

Forever. And I'll bet that every single person in that church believed them when they said it, even those of us who know better, those of us for whom Forever as a concept has been relegated to the time between when we lie down and the time when, still awake, we hear the first bird of the morning start to sing. I will love you forever. Forever.

Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)