by jimsc
Though we dated several times, he even attending church with me, our relationship stalled. I was not her, never could or would be. I was also headed off for college, the one and same university that had graduated him.
I was sad during much of the summer.
He had stood me up and not followed through on attending Baccalaureate and graduation services for my high school class, both of which he had led me to believe he would attend.
And yet often what we believe a person will do, is what we had always hoped.
I think my mother was secretly happy to have her former student drive me to college where he attended.
She needed me to get over the photographer, and who better to help me accomplish that than a new prospect.
Little did she or I know that the photographer would re-appear at my college dorm, calling for permission to come up to my room.
Yes, I lived in an all girls dorm that demanded young men request to come up to a girl’s room.
I allowed him to come up. But said, “No,” to his request to remain for the night.
Four years later he would attend a dinner hosted by the lady who directed my wedding and her husband, one of the town dentists who also knew my fiancé’s father, also a dentist.
My then fiancé and now husband were the major guests, the local papers having announced our engagement to marry later that year.
The photographer brought his then wife, to the dinner, the woman with whom people had rumored he was having the affair, the woman whom some had said I resembled.
She had had divorced her husband and married the photographer who had broken my heart and the then sought to remain with me overnight in my dorm room.
Upon her divorce, the woman’s husband subsequently committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.
Sitting across the dinner table from this woman, once a divorcee, never widowed, and now remarried, I saw no resemblance between us, not in the slightest.
Months later his photographer with whom I had the notoriously emotionally charge interactions would videotape my wedding.
I think of him often when I view the videotape of my wedding nearly thirty-two years ago.
The music begins, not Wagner’s Wedding March, but instead Rigadaun, and I remember the photographer, my broken heart, all the dreams I had held of us marrying and I though leaving for college, also carrying plans to return home and marry him, the photographer.
Little did I know that life had held a different path for me.
I am certain now that my mother was prayerfully happy and proud in this occurrence.
And as her daughter, so am I.