The Wedding
With the return of my energy came an influx of great ideas that I felt pressed
to accomplish as soon as possible, (my usual way of doing things), with of course
the added incentive to forge ahead quickly. Marriage was top of the list. What
would be the purpose of dying, if I hadn’t yet lived? I phoned the priest
from the church I had always gone to as a young girl and asked him if he could
marry, my then fiancée, and me? Of course time was of an essence since
I might be dead any time now, so perhaps he could come over in 1-½ weeks
to perform what would be an in house ceremony.
The priest, Father Mudge, duly informed me that he would love to, but on such
short notice he was a bit busy, so could I change the date to the day before,
which would be December the 23rd instead? I had no problem with that, a little
disappointed, but hey I could live with it, and it was set. This was all accomplished
in the matter of hours from onset of thought to ‘set in stone’.
When my, husband to be, came over from work that day I informed him about the
great news, that we were to be married in 1-½ weeks! The excitement didn’t
reverberate throughout his body, shining like a ray of jubilant energy, like
I might have hoped, but he did not disagree and it was set. The planning and
preparation for the wedding made the 30-day fast go by much quicker, for me,
(and I’m sure for him as well).
It was actually the 23rd day of the grape fast on the 23rd day of December 1977
when we got married. We had spent countless shopping trips acquiring the perfect
ornaments for the Christmas wedding tree. It was so exciting picking out a new
veil and renting a hoop for under what would now be my wedding gown. I had played
in my dress up in it as a little girl and now, thanks to the weight I was able
to lose on the grape fast, I would be married in it, slight alterations were
made, dry cleaning was rushed and we were ready. All attention was focused on
making the wedding perfect. The roses had to be a perfect Christmas red with
green leaves and white ribbon. The men quickly rented formal tuxes. The cake,
well, on such short notice and the fact I couldn’t eat it anyhow, was
cardboard, great for the pictures though.
Friends and relatives arrived from all over; it turned out to be a picture perfect
time in my life, regardless of the circumstances. It just shows you can find
something positive wherever you look; you just need to believe. Our neighbour,
a close friend of the family, would do the pictures and out of consideration
for how exhausted I was supposed to be, decided to do the pictures before the
ceremony. Strange, but for some reason, my husband seemed to be frowning in
most of the pictures. (As I found out, years later, he had been in the middle
of a quickie bachelor party when he was abruptly called to do the pictures early.)
The wedding was performed by candlelight in my parent’s living room with
about 45 friends and relatives attending. I slowly descended the staircase to
my grandmother and cousins humming ‘Here comes the bride’. It really
was a beautiful romantic wedding.
I got the giggles. There I was shoulders shaking trying not to laugh, I had
no idea what it would look like to anyone else, in the candlelight, with my
veil covering my face, but to my mother, with all that had been going on, she
thought I was sobbing uncontrollably. So right there, exhausted from everything
of late, including all the wedding build-up, she broke out in tears. Which,
got everyone else going, even me. It was quite a scene.
Eventually we were able to continue and the rest went smoothly. Afterwards there
was a beautiful and ‘delicious smelling’, potluck dinner, which
I got to watch everyone eat. There was homemade wine, which I pretended to join
in with my grape juice. It was a picture perfect wedding, a positive interlude
on my ongoing battle with cancer, everything went right. Before we knew it though,
the evening was over, and not long after so was the grape fast.
The fast ended after the 30 day period, my husband and I were living on our
own in a quaint little cottage on the water, my health seemed to be doing so
well, we were extremely hopeful, as I gradually began to add food back into
my diet. Starting with juiced beets, onions, cabbage and a whole lot of other
yummy, yummy veggie stuff. Soon we added whole wheat bread. Not wanting to add
anything to my system that didn’t belong I choose to become a baker, grinding
the flour with a hand crank grinder and baking the bread in our old oil burning
stove, along with this we were slowly adding a variety of fruits; this was when
I started to notice the headaches, the nasally voice, finally around mid January
/78 we came to the conclusion that the lump was quickly starting to grow back.
No problem, the search was back on.