I mentioned a while back that Chloe Belle sent me on a little photoooo dredging expotition back into the Jurassic Age. The purpose of the expotition was to find wedding photoooos so that the very creative TMOTB/CMOH could put together a collage of all the once brides who were invited to The Beautiful Renee’s wedding. TMOTB placed this beauteous collage in the bathroom at the reception.

The assignment was to provide a photooo of myself at my wedding and I procrastinated about sending it in. In part that was because I *thought* that I had a bunch of wedding photos on my computer and I figured I could just find one any old time and go print it at Tarjay or somewhere. Wouldn’t you know, when I finally got around to looking for my photos, after a whole bunch of deserved admonitions from Chloe Belle, I could not find the wedding photos. 20,000 haphazardly tagged photos? Yeah. You try. So I had to go back and look for the album and find something to scan. Nothing is ever easy and neither was this. Because I didn’t *have* any kind of “official” wedding photographer. The Engineer probably took some photos and maybe some other people. It was a beach wedding and it was what it was and I had a devil of a time finding a photo of just me. I finally had to crop the old coot (my dad) out of one. His hand is on my arm in the photo in the collage that was posted in the bathroom.

The photo accompanying this post is not the one that was included in the collage*. I’m posting it here because it shows that we were barefoot. I had to talk The Commander down off a ledge about that. That venerable woman had a really hard time accepting the fact that I was going to get married in bare feet. Fer kee-reist, I got married on the BEACH!!! MY beach! The beach I have known since I was six months old. I have ALWAYS gone barefoot on that beach. I still do. Why the heck would I wear shoes at my wedding? That conversation went on right up until it was time to walk down to the beach, uh, aisle. But I WAS wearing bare feet. And, as the old coot and I started down the path to the beach, I happened to look down at HIS feet and guess what HE was wearing? Or not wearing, as was the case. (Love you, ol’ man, wherever the heck you are.)

I never did get my photo printed out. I loaded it on to a jump drive and took it over to Tarjay on the way to work. The machine was jammed and nobody there knew how to fix it. They had a call in to Kodak. Did I have any shopping to do? Meeeeee? Shop? Yiiiy! Shopping? No. I looked at the nice, friendly employee with panic in my eyes and mumbled something about having to go to work, not that the long-suffering, cat-herding person would much care if I was a little late.

I left the store feeling a little dejected. I knew that Chloe Belle was waiting for my photo and I felt like I was letting him down. But it was more than that. Going through those photos reminded me of all the people who were at my wedding that aren’t around any more. Duke was the first to leave us, only a year or so later. For a long time after that, things went on very happily. My generation had our babies and then, in only a few years, we lost Katie, Don, The Engineer, my dad, Radical Betty. And here we are. The Fin Fam is sort of between weddings. Our 20-somethings are busy building their lives and not ready to marry. We meet more often at funerals these days. I got to work, dried the damn tears off my face, checked that I didn’t have raccoon eyes, and went inside to lose myself in the details of my job.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I think one of the reasons I cry at weddings nowadays is that I am thinking about all of the people who are not around any more. I am not sad exactly. I’m not sure that anyone could be sad watching The Beautiful Renee and her new husband Nick begin their life together. They are wonderful young people and I am very happy for them. But there I sat, tears streaming down my face, feeling caught between the future and the past. I haven’t explained this very well but I am outta words. Ya do the hokey pokey and ya turn yourself around. That’s what it’s all about!

Sappily yours and good night,
-KW

* I sent it to Chloe Belle but only for fun. I didn’t expect it to be included.

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