appeared at a wedding she wasn’t invited to. I followed her, and what I found in that bridal room made my grief feel suddenly unfinished.
Three months ago, I was supposed to marry Andrew.
Instead, I buried him.
Even now, those two sentences did not seem like they belonged beside each other.
One belonged to the life I had planned.
The other belonged to the one I had been forced into.
Andrew died suddenly, just 12 days before our wedding.
Twelve days.
That was close enough that my wedding dress was already altered.
The seating chart was finished.
The florist had confirmed the centerpieces.
Andrew’s suit was hanging in his apartment, waiting for a day that never came.
One week, I was worrying about whether it might rain during our pictures.
The next, I was choosing flowers for his funeral.
People kept telling me they were sorry.[]
They brought food I could not taste and hugged me while I stared past their shoulders.
Some cried harder than I did.
I think I was too numb.
At the funeral, I stood beside Andrew’s mother, Clementine, and watched people line up to tell us what a wonderful man he had been.
I already knew.
Clementine barely spoke at the funeral.
That surprised me more than anything.
She had always been composed, but she was never cold.
Before Andrew died, she called me every few days.
Sometimes she wanted to ask about wedding details.
Sometimes she just wanted to talk.
She once spent 40 minutes debating whether ivory table linens looked warmer than white ones.
At the funeral, she looked like a different woman.
Her face seemed smaller.
Her shoulders curved inward.
Every time someone approached her, she gave the same distant nod.
Near the end of the service, she finally came over to me.
She hugged me once and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
I held on longer than she did.
I wanted her to say something else.
Anything.
That Andrew loved me.
That she missed him.
That she understood why I felt like half my body had been removed.
Instead, she pulled away.
Then she disappeared from my life.
