37. The Wedding

A Memoir in 65 Postcards & The Recovery Diaries

It’s true, I rode side-saddle, barefoot, silk butterflies tied to my toes, glass jewels about my eyes, a white slip hemmed with pearls and roses, a Victorian veil, a crown of flowers, nine maidens. Our guests divided, the women with me, the men with you to the wedding circle high on the hill. Flautists in the trees, drummers on the path, gongs hanging from branches made echo in the wind, a late-summer, warm September day in Surrey, a stone circle half built. My father and mother waiting for me in an archway, he, eccentric, loving it, she, moved and likely worried, the rest of my family dispersed amongst guests amused, probably, the latest ridiculousness, what next, this, a pagan wedding in the woods. We walked the ribbons, you and I; yellow and blue, I the sun and you the moon, your dog running, me on the arm of my father, he wore a tweed suit and wellies, a pheasant feather stuck in a deerstalker hat. My veil trailed over the woodland floor, snagging on brambles, the maidens blew bubbles, our audience of guests, propped on fallen logs, watched a choreographed ceremony of us. A Megalithic Giant and a Dakini goddess to bind us, the altar a tower of stone and twist of candles, clouded in incense and not yet broken. We read vows, swapped rings and were married. I didn’t notice that your best man wasn’t there. There was so much cheering. We descended together through the woods to the party at the farmhouse; champagne, food and speeches, you sang on stage, we partied all night but the next day there would be a phone call which you took quietly. You gathered me up, back to the wedding circle, I remember twelve of us sitting where you and I had married, you said you had something to say. Your best man’s wife had rung. At the hour you and I were married when he should have been there, he had instead dressed in his full regalia, placed his ceremonial knives about him, sent his wife out for orange juice and milk and taken his own life. He left her, his twelve-year-old son and baby daughter. He left you. And I remember thinking, You should have told me first. I knew then it was over before we’d begun. I know now what shock does.