This doesn't mean I'm not excited to get married...

Maybe we get older and wiser as we age, as we move through life and what it puts in front of us. I think that some things remain the same and remain just as hard no matter how long you’ve been coping with them or how well you have incorporated the pain in to your life. I’ve felt for the past week or so this un-excitement about my upcoming wedding. It is not that I’m not excited to be marrying Matt, I am beyond thrilled to be formally stating my desires to spend the rest of my life with him building a family. Yet, I’ve felt something in the pit of my stomach that isn’t excitement and joy when I thought about the wedding.

At first I chalked it up to stuff happening at work. I couldn’t be excited about the wedding because I had to get through some tough things there first, and they were clouding anything else in my life.

So, I focused instead on all the little things that need to be taken care of when you are planning a wedding on your own. How many guests would be staying on property, and how did we want to set up their welcome bags? What should we buy for the children coming to the wedding to play with? What did we want to get our parents as gifts? What are some weekend activities we can plan to share in with our friends? Where should I book manicures, and hair appointments? What else can I put on my To Do list to focus on instead of what I’m really feeling about that weekend and event?

Last night I picked something to really dig in to, that not only allowed me to be distracted by what the day had brought up (lack of sleep, food and doing something that brought me one step closer to the reality of the day) it also allowed me to point my anxiety and frustration at Matt. After bickering, I climbed in to bed and pulled the covers over my head.

Matt was thoroughly confused, and because of how I’d acted assumed he did something wrong, which made him confused and frustrated. I wanted to just keep pushing it down, and him out of bed so I didn’t have to talk about it. But instead I just started crying, and finally let it all come out.

The greatest thing is that I didn’t even have to verbalize it because he knew, and he was right there, just like he’ll always be, which is why I’m marrying him. But of course I did verbalize it, because just crying doesn’t get it out, I have to talk about it too. Oh the processing I have to do.

I let myself realize and put words to the fact that I’m not that excited about celebrating my wedding because my Dad won’t be there. I want to be married to Matt, but I don’t want to celebrate without my Dad. I don’t want to walk down the aisle only on the arm of my Mother and Brother. People can say all they want about being there in spirit, but it doesn’t make it better for me. He’s not there in person, and that’s what matters.

It is a weird thing when you lose someone so suddenly, so young, and tragically. Sometimes it feels like the history and past have been erased to, because there person was gone so quickly. But when I look at pictures, and when I think about Squam and what it meant to him, and what it means to our family, I am brought right back to the fact that he was such a huge part of my life, of our life as a family. But, now he’s gone, and it is hard to incorporate his disappearance with the history of my life. So I find myself finding it even harder to think about celebrating a major life milestone without him, because he’s supposed to be there, and he won’t be, and I kind of don’t want to do it without him.

I almost envision myself walking up the aisle, and suddenly in some kind of thriller, where all the pictures have him in them again, and all the past is real and full of him and I start to get excited that he’ll appear on my arm. But he won’t, and it will be crushing, yet I’ll finally be able to understand that he was there, alive and wonderful, and he’s just not anymore. And, I just keep walking down the aisle towards a man who is here, who takes care of me, and with whom I’ll build a new family to incorporate with my lopsided one.