I remember wearing a handpicked lily in my hair on that warm afternoon in the south. The Mason Dixon line was long behind me like high school lovers and unspoken abortions. We had no history in the south, well no history that we could name. The only aunts and uncles we had there were slaves we could only recognize in our features. But there we were, with our feet enamored with the fleshy grass beneath us. It only made sense to build a future where the past began, so we came home, never really knowing when exactly we left.
Like I said, it was a warm afternoon. It wasn't hot enough to make the leaves on the great sycamores sweat but the breeze did tickle nature's most precious monuments. One hundred chairs lined up before me with lavender bows tied delicately around each seat. They looked handcrafted by a mystical fairy godmother and I was pleased. Lavender is my mother's favorite color and I made it mine just to be closer to her. This new set of miles between has us only made me want to get closer to her but at fifteen I wanted to get as far away as possible. I believe that is the simple irony of mothers and daughters. Nonetheless, I could see the back of her head waiting for me in the front row. She was an aged woman with more wrinkles than stories and even when she chose not to partake in my life, she was at least always there to witness what was going on. I glanced over the rest of the chairs filled with members of our family. I could see Mason's uncle's head bobbing side to side like he was drowning in his own alcohol and his wife sitting still beside him as an example of what he should have been doing instead. Ms. Nina was a beautiful and kind woman who was with a bad man. I loved her more for loving who others considered unloveable. I'm sure Mason got his kind ways from her. He used to sit me down in front of him while playing with my hair and tell me all the rules of being a gentlemen from the collections of Ms. Nina. She was the reason he ran my bathwater after long days of traveling or walked on the outside of the sidewalk with his hand in mine. Ms. Nina had raised a son instead of a nephew and he was better for it. Everybody else sat there looking like shadows to me, place fillers until I could make my way down to the front. Each body felt like a replacement for an emotion I was feeling. Ms. Nina was my peace. Her husband was my drunken escape. My mother was the true representation of so many questions that would go unanswered but a reminder to keep going. And the rest were emotions I would rather not to discuss, not because they aren't deserving of acknowledgment but rather because I felt like my time was now limited to do the acknowledging.
The music stopped as a signal for me to move from behind the curtains of my quarters to step into the piercing sun. My moment had come to make an appearance and declare my love for the man waiting at the front. I paused, wondering for a moment if I was beautiful enough, if the lily in my hair was still blooming behind my ear. My dress was made of a simple cotton, the kind that hung on lines in the backyard waiting to be pressed by the sun and I wondered if it curved around my breasts, waist and thighs like his arms had so many times before. I pushed the light curtain to the side and put my leg out first. I looked at the fifteen feet that I had to walk and realized it would be an eternity literally. I was walking toward the rest of my life and I never understood why women had to walk it alone. Had tradition never considered the possibility of a man and woman taking this journey together? Nonetheless, I was dressed in my best determined to meet him hoping that my warm hands and my declaration to love him for an entire lifetime will loosen his stiff neck and his tense shoulders and convince him to join me. I felt the wind blowing from the east with a butterfly in its waves. The air was calm as if to join in for the serenity of the moment. Birds sat on their arched tree branches, quiet with observation. I took one step at a time, each one heavier than the other. Muttering under my breath while twirling my solid, gold ring around my fourth finger, I told myself, "Just one more step, just a moment longer."
I finally reached to the front and grabbed Mason's hand. Tears streamed down my face as I hung my head low. My veil sat on my eyelashes until I used my free hand to push it back. I needed to see his face. His face so peaceful, just like the day we got married. Mason wore calm like it was his favorite color. I watched his lips hoping they would move, hoping they would say the vows we made seven years earlier just to reiterate the most important promise in marriage - till death do us part. I stood over my husband's casket grimaced with the pain of loving him in that death still, for wanting to lay beside him, for asking God to make a little more room for me in that coffin. I didn't want to part. I wanted to die with him and I wore my finest dress for the last date we would ever have. His wedding ring glistened on his cold hand and his suit framed his broad shoulders just like the Earth had when he carried it from time to time. My husband was so handsome, so wonderful, too precious to be laying in the unappreciative dirt. I felt the sun on my back hoping he would feel it too and get up to complain about just how hot it was, but he didn't move. He didn't speak. He just laid there in a mahogany casket that would never be as comfortable as our bed. I wanted to be with my husband even in death, but life had left me behind. Life had forced me to stay for just a little while longer, it had asked me to keep breathing and it hurt me to oblige. They never tell you when you get to the altar that the hardest part of your marriage would be the end of it.
I love my husband and I vowed to love him as long as we both shall live. So even though, only one of our wedding rings still turns around the flesh of a lonely ring finger when I want to feel him next to me, I will love him, in life, in death and whatever happens after that.
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