Chicken Soup for the Bride's Soul (25 page)

Mark and I slipped into the white limousine to leave. He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. Pastel balloons crowded my side of the seat, but I didn’t mind. The young driver started for our destination, forgetting about our special stop. Mark spoke up to redirect him.

“Oh, yeah, you wanted to make a stop. Just tell me where to go.” Mark gave him the location.

“It’s a cemetery,” I said softly. There was silence in the car. “My mom is buried there.”

“I bet you don’t get many requests like this,” Mark chimed in.

“No, sure don’t,” the driver replied, glancing through his rearview mirror. “But I understand. I lost my mother when I was thirteen.”

At the cemetery, I clutched Mark’s hand. How could my heart be filled with so much happiness and so much emptiness at the same time?

There we were—me, a bride in long white gown, and Mark, a groom in handsome black tuxedo—strolling on the sun-scorched grass, gazing at tombstone after tombstone, caressed by the summer evening air.

One hand held my husband’s and the other gripped my bouquet. My chin quivered as we neared my mother’s gravesite. We stood prayerfully above it in the dusk. Then, without saying a word, I bent and tenderly laid my bridal flowers on her headstone. Lightly, lingeringly, I stroked the carved letters of my mother’s name.

I just had to come here on this special day, Mom,
I thought.
How you would have rejoiced at our wedding. The guests, the smiles, our joy.

Mark held me to his chest while, together, we read the etched scripture my mother had chosen for her marker: “I know that my Redeemer lives.” (Job 19:25) Next to those words lay the elegant bouquet that symbolized the most important day of my life.

Julie Messbarger
As told to Charlotte Adelsperger

Pennies from Heaven

C
hildren and mothers never truly part Bound in the beating of each other’s heart.

Charlotte Gray

My friend Jill and her mom had a very close relationship. Of the many things they enjoyed together, they often talked about Jill’s wedding day and what it would be like to plan together. But losing a battle with cancer would keep Jill’s mom from ever seeing her daughter get married. Her death was devastating.

A few years later, Jill got engaged and began to plan her wedding. Every nuptial detail brought mixed emotions during this bittersweet time. Yet, despite her loss, Jill amazed me with her strength and faith.

Soon after her mom’s death, a peculiar thing began happening. Jill would find pennies at odd times in familiar places.

Sometimes she would go to shops and restaurants where she and her mom had spent time together. Miraculously, she’d find a bright, shiny penny. Occasionally she’d leave a room only to come back and find one right in the middle of the floor, knowing it wasn’t there earlier. In the midst of stressful situations or struggles with her grief, a penny would pop up.

Jill believed they were signs from her mom.

“They’re her way of letting me know she’ll always be with me. They’re my ‘pennies from heaven.’”

On the day of the wedding, the bride, her other attendants and I went to Jill’s favorite salon to get our hair done. The stylist did Jill’s hair first, creating an elegant “up-do” with her blonde locks. The rest of us followed, taking turns in the stylists’ chairs. The morning was pleasant with lots of laughter, smiles and even a few tears of love and happiness.

While Jill was in another room getting her makeup done, the stylists softly asked how she was holding up, knowing it was an emotional day.

“She’s doing great,” I said, “thanks to her ‘pennies from heaven.’”

The two stylists looked perplexed, so I explained the phenomenon.

Astonished, one replied, “You’re not going to believe this. But when we opened the shop this morning, there was a single, shiny penny in the middle of the floor. I know it wasn’t there when we closed up the night before.”

He directed us to the corner where he had swept the untouched penny. As he placed the polished copper coin in my hand, we stared at each other. All of us decided we would plan a special moment to present this token to Jill.

After the wedding reception, we anxiously waited for all the guests to leave.

“Close your eyes and stretch out your hand,” I nervously asked. Grinning from ear to ear and with goose bumps tracing my spine, I gently placed the symbolic coin in Jill’s palm.

She opened her eyes and stared in amazement.

While we explained where we found the penny, tears welled in her eyes. Jill squeezed the comforting coin and brought it close to her heart. Then she smiled and opened her hand again to admire her wedding memento.

“She’s been here all day, hasn’t she?” I fondly asked my friend.

With remarkable calm, Jill answered, “Yes, Mom didn’t miss a thing.”

Holly Jensen Hughes

Silverware and Sauces

S
pice a dish with love and it pleases every palate.

Plautus

“How long has your grandma been senile?” my fiancé asked, after his first dinner at her house.

Truth is, while I made no excuses for my family, I had to feel pretty secure about someone to introduce them to my gene pool. The word “eccentric” doesn’t really describe them, but it’s more polite.

Still, I was startled by those words. If Grandma had turned senile, I couldn’t tell. For as long as I could remember she’d been this way. Actually, she was spoiled. Her diminutive stature, soft chin and thinning white curls were misleading. While family members often sneaked around her, no one ever dared oppose her.

On the afternoon I asked to bring Wayne to dinner, Grandma perked up, turning away from her game show to regard me carefully. Bringing a man to the house was serious business. Grandma figured this was my last prospect for silverware and china. I was nearing thirty, after all, and had no property and way too much education.

“What does he like to eat?” She was intent on impressing this man on my behalf.

“Oh, I don’t know, anything.” I tried to be casual. Actually, he was something of a gourmet chef who cooked almost all the meals we shared, but I didn’t dare let Grandma know that.

“He likes regular food,” I said, “you know, just meat, potatoes and a vegetable. Green beans, maybe.” This is what Grandma fixed every Sunday.

“But what do
you
fix for him?” Her eyes narrowed.

I made some vague answer. I’m sure she was suspicious, so I mumbled that he was fond of sauces.

“You mean gravy?” She was confident now.

“No, Grandma,” I said, “not gravy. He likes sauces, on all kinds of things.”

Grandma, of course, taught me what little there was to know about gravy; but I was thinking more along the lines of chasseur’s sauce, teriyaki, Dijon and hollandaise, delicacies that required shallots, imported mushrooms and wine. Such ingredients never saw the inside of Grandma’s kitchen.

So, the great and terrible Sunday came. Grandma arranged her good china on the carefully ironed linen tablecloth. She prepared meat, potatoes and green beans but, strangely, no gravy. I could tell by the thin line of Grandpa’s mouth that he was holding his tongue about the lack of gravy.

By way of instruction to me, Grandma added an orange gelatin salad on iceberg lettuce, ice tea and a pickle tray. She made a big deal of having me help her in the kitchen, hoping my fiancé would be duped into believing I had cooked the meal.

Wayne was seated next to Grandma. Now, no one in the family actually remembers ever seeing Grandma eat. Normally, she perched on her chair, offering seconds way too early and commanding Grandpa to pass the white bread. With my future hanging in the balance, she was especially keen to her duty.

Within minutes after the meal began, Grandma sprang into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of steak sauce, which she placed strategically in front of Wayne. A few minutes later she went to the kitchen again, this time returning with a bottle of Worcestershire sauce. Before long, arrayed before the plate of the man I really wanted to impress, Grandma had arranged the ketchup, soy sauce, mustard . . . and just about anything else she could dig out of the cupboard. Judging from the crust around the caps, the bottles looked to be about twenty years old.

My fiancé threw me a puzzled glance.

“Grandma, what’s with all the bottles?” I ventured, breaking with required etiquette.

“Well, didn’t you say he liked sauces?” she whispered fiercely.

Much to his credit, Wayne didn’t laugh out loud but only thanked Grandma for her attentions. He even put a little steak sauce on his meat to satisfy her. By the time Grandpa was served his traditional dessert of white balloon bread smothered in clear corn syrup, my friend and lover didn’t even blink.

Our wedding was a few months later, and Grandma enjoyed herself while feeling helpful serving coffee from her own crowd-sized coffee maker.

Grandma is gone now; but I hope she knows I married well. We’re not rich, but we’re happy. It’s a good partnership— he makes the sauces and I make the gravy.

Carol Mell

Budding Hope

T
here is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow.

Orison Marden

“Will you hurry up?”

I don’t actually say it, but I’m sure thinking it. Sitting here on the front steps of my parents’ house, I’m waiting for my new husband, Jim, who’s still inside packing a few last things. We’ve been married for a week and a day.

This morning, we’re going to swing by the hospital to visit Dad, say our farewells, climb into our car and head to Colorado from New York. This is such a wonderfully exciting time for us. Everything is brand-new, and we’ve decided to begin our married lives in a new state where I’ve never been before.

But for the moment, I have to wait. My mind wanders.

I glance over at the rose bush my father gave my mother on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. It was a grandiose gesture then, but what a sad-looking bush it is now. It’s scrawny with a few buds scattered across its branches. I have no idea what color it’s designed to produce because it’s never bloomed. It just keeps hanging on year after year, budding out but not going any further until the leaves fall off each autumn. It’s such a stubborn plant, sticking it out, determined to live.

Stubborn.

Suddenly this rose bush reminds me of an argument Dad and I had about a month ago. We had both been so stubborn over something that seems, now, so petty.

A few weeks before the wedding, I brought my wedding gown home along with a beautiful veil I had found. The veil coordinated perfectly with the gown. Okay, I admit, buying it was a bit extravagant because the veil actually cost more than the dress.

Later that night, about 1:00 A.M., I woke up because I heard a noise downstairs. I walked down to the kitchen to find Dad sitting at the table holding my veil. Before I could even ask why he was awake, he began criticizing the cost of the veil.

“I can’t believe you’d spend that much!” He slammed his fist on the table.

Startled by his unexpected outburst, I reacted with my own angry protest. “It’s made for the dress. Don’t you want me to look great on my wedding day?”

Then came my ultimate hit-below-the-belt comment. “But what do you care? You might not even be there!”

Whoa. That one hurt. Especially because we both knew it was true.

Seriously ill, Dad was scheduled to have open-heart surgery on the Thursday after my wedding. He was pretty weak by this time (although you couldn’t tell by his yelling) and was supposed to be resting in preparation.

Dad would enter the hospital for two weeks of testing prior to the surgery—and my wedding fell right in the middle. We all hoped the surgeon would “let Dad out” to attend and give me away.

But the fear hung there: Dad might not be strong enough. And, as the yelling showed, it was a sensitive issue.

I had grown up feeling very close to Dad. Yet here we were, hollering at each other, neither of us willing to give in. I would wear this veil no matter what. After all, it was my wedding.

We stood in silence, fuming, glaring at each other because there was no more to say. I stomped upstairs to my bedroom and broke down.

But this time it wasn’t about the veil. I was scared and so was Dad. Scared he really wouldn’t be at the wedding. Scared he could die. Scared to admit how much we loved each other, knowing I would be moving 2,000 miles away to start a life he couldn’t be part of every day.

I slipped back to the kitchen and gave him a hug, a wordless “I’m sorry” for both of us.

On the evening of my wedding, they released Dad from the hospital (with lots of “dos” and “don’ts”) for four hours. While we sat in the brides’ room for a few last moments together, he took my hands lovingly in his.

“Hello, Beautiful.”

He was too weak to walk with me down the aisle, so my brother did the honor. But Dad waited up front by the minister and gently put my hand into the hand of my new husband.