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                “A law was made a distant moon ago here:
                July and August cannot be too hot….”

Twenty-eight hours before matrimony, and as I picked my aunt up — precisely on time, I might add — nothing had changed.

“I should have asked your brother to drive me.”
“Why, Aunt Helen? I said 5:40 and it’s 5:40.”
“He’s never late,” she noted.
“Neither am I.”
“Why must everything be an issue?”

(We drove in silence: she regretting her last sixty years and me regretting the next sixty minutes). Not really. The Annointed One, Harold be he, was meeting us at temple, and my brother would shine as our buffer).

Poetic it was being our father’s yartzeit. Beautiful memories of him blending with beautiful thoughts of her, the service flew by. He’d have loved Carrie, I knew— and not just ‘cause she played gin. Love him too, would she have. Best of all, however, he (like she and me), would have loved us!

Fourteen hours pre-ceremony I breakfasted at Corky’s. (Go figure).

“The usual?” she asked.
“Challah French toast,” I proclaimed. “No syrup, though. I’m on my wedding diet.”

At the ten-hour mark the calls began.  Meredith and Michael, as I stood in Verizon — followed shortly by Bonesy.  Stacy and I?  We spoke and texted all day,’though Yes, I took a break for Last Coffee with Weiskopf.  (Ed. Note:  From all my single-dom, I’ll miss Ed most).

And the clock ticked down:   Hitting the office, schlepping food for Helen … packing, readying for a rare week away … microwaving (for old time’s sake) one last piece of salmon …

Four hours ‘ere game time I stopped at my brother’s. Sitting in symmetry — on the same couches where we’d cried through “Field Of Dreams” and “It’s A Wonderful Life” — smiling, laughing like the two boys on Hopkins Avenue, on Bayard Road…

Two hours to go, and I was where I belonged: at a meeting. How could I not be?

It was the fall of ’97, and after two nights at Cleveland Clinic, it chose to discharge me.  “Get to a meeting tonight,” urged the nurse.  “I can’t,” I advised her, “…Visitation night with the girls.  ”They’d rather you got well,” she said. “It’s where you belong.”  Sixty-five hundred days have passed. Plus. Forgotten I haven’t: what got me to the dance, what gave me my life.

Dennis stood up at 9, as the conclave was ending.

“Let’s keep Bruce in our prayers,” he announced. “He’s getting married tonight.  “Maybe we should pray for his wife?” someone quipped.

Returning to the condo, psyched, I was greeted at the door by the two Ocean Eyes and unique elegance of my bride-to-be.

Then it happened so fast: Rabbi Mandel’s words … the Shevah Brachot … the holding back tears, the not holding back tears … the breaking of the glass!
Within a half hour we were on our way —

To Pittsburgh
To Boca
To Life.“

“…In short there’s simply not a more congenial spot

For happy ever-aftering than here in Camelot!”

Lerner/Loewe

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 8th, 2015 at 1:44 pm and is filed under Up From Dysfunction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.