A Push And A Shove for L-O-V-E Part 2

Keyword-Falling

So, my brother, Peter, got married this past Saturday.  It borders on miracle that it was pulled off. This is his second marriage since as his first wife passed away way too young.

Peter, the hopeless romantic, proposed to Holly on Christmas Eve (naturally….Holly…..get it?) because he is and always will be a total goober for love, a trait I admit that we share.  After all, he had all the synchronicities that Holly was the one.    He lived on “Holly” Pond when he met Holly.  His daughter and son-in-law bought a home on the corner of “Holly” Lane. Even though he has asked me not to talk about such things as synchrinocities, coincidences, and most especially spirit presence, I am pretty damn sure after this weekend he won’t deem me the family “Witch” anymore because it wasn’t me who was driving the bus with the shenanigans that occurred coming up to this wedding.  I just helped clean up one mess and smirked a lot.

I’ve been told by Peter among others, I have an annoying characteristic of reading people, and its usually by those who don’t want me to get inside their heads.  The latest example happened when I was out to dinner with friends last night.  Two gentlemen were dining across from us, and I asked if the younger man was asking the older man for his daughter’s hand in marriage.  It’s funny how people react when I just blurt this stuff out.  They don’t even have time to recover and figure out a cover.  Needless to say, I was correct.

So, Columbus Day weekend was chosen for Peter and Holly’s  wedding date. Ugh-shit really?  Columbus Day weekend is usually a gorgeous weekend, and I would know this because it was THE same weekend I got married 30 years ago to 1X.  Memories…..light the corners of my eyes….and burn right through my retinas.  I had also heard through the family grapevine my niece’s husband was going to be at his Step Brother’s wedding in California.  Now they had two good reasons to change it ya? Not on your life.

All during the wedding preparations, I never heard about any prenuptial drama then again I’m not sure where the hell I am or what I’m hearing one minute to the next.

So, with absolute no help from me, I’m headed to beautiful Stonington/Mystic area on Friday to check in to what turned out to be a one step up from a Motel 6 – don’t take your flip flops off ever, keep your toothbrush in one of those toothbrush condoms at all times hotels.  My brother booked the room for me because I can’t think beyond a single day anymore and most people in my life understand why that is and now I think he gets it as well.  It was bad enough that my family drove the bride & groom crazy with our lack of family RSVP’s.  Who can’t come because they’re working.  Who can’t come because they may be moved to St. Croix by then.  In the end, everybody could go and their meal selections had to be sent via text message.  We are one tacky crew, but our intentions are always good.

I no sooner check into the toothbrush condom hotel and my brother needs help with the flower arrangement delivery to the wedding venue.  He’s high energy (putting it mildly), and I can’t even recall where or how the hell we got anywhere.  All I know is at one point he handed me an Alex and Ani bracelet with the Mystic charm on it as a thank you.  I said I didn’t do anything to be thanked for…..I should’ve known.

We go to load the spectacular flower arrangements into his car and it’s cluttered with crutches, a scooter and his Mother-in-Law-to-be is asking what to do with the wheelchair. I’m confused – who the hell is needing all this damn geriatric equipment?  Is the whole damn Avalon assisted living compound coming to this wedding?  Oh, I didn’t tell you Peter says, “Holly missed the last step into our driveway and broke her ankle.”  After the initial shock wore off, followed by speaking a few words of encouragement to the bride on how great her scooter wedding will be (she didn’t buy it), we loaded the arrangements into both our cars leaving the bride in the front seat with her patriotic foot – red toenail polish, white bandage wrapped around a blue foot.

We pull up to the wedding venue and Peter has the first two arrangements and is rushing up the stairs.  I had a BAD feeling watching him and then in that slooooow motion he falls up the stairs shattering the glass of both arrangements with his sausage fingers all in the mix.  I put mine down on the stairs and ran to find someone with a band aid and mop-eeen.  All the while this is happening, Holly is in the car pulled up far enough that she can’t see what’s going on…not yet anyway.

In between humping the remaining I don’t know how many damn arrangements up those hexed stairs with shin splints forming, it’s determined by the wedding hall employee (former nurse) that Peter needed stitches since he’s bleeding like a stuffed pig, and I’m sure the damn baby aspirin he eats daily as a blood thinner didn’t help matters.  This would be the same young woman who convinced Holly to go for X-rays on her ankle only a few days prior so she was at the eye rolling stage.

We finally had to come clean and break the news to Holly that the bleeder needed to make a trip to emergency care, and asked the woman from the wedding hall to drive Holly back to the room so she could get ready for the rehearsal.  I drove Peter to an emergency walk-in 20 minutes away.  This was where it got real interesting because the tables were now turned.  My brother was asking me what I thought about the “trip” down the stairs and the “shove” up the stairs.  All I know is I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time.  We made fast friends at the Emergency Care, nurse Judy giving us our own Kleenex boxes because of our hysteria.  Once they learned the bride had broken her ankle and we were completely missing the rehearsal, they took pity and processed the sausage thumb pretty quick.  Turns out, Peter’s sausage thumb didn’t need stitches because there wasn’t skin to stitch since he sheared the tip off.  So, they dressed it up wedding formal nice with some foam skin growing crap and wrapped it up gift worthy.  I jokingly asked if I could score a few splints and bandages for the remainder of the weekend.  I did lift a few of those handy umbrella bags on the way out the door so the jerk had something to put on those sausage links to shower so he wouldn’t smell on his wedding day.

I haul and drop his ass off to the already ended rehearsal and fly back to Motel 6 to change for the rehearsal dinner because all I had the entire day was a Starbucks latte and a piece of lemon cake, and a headache from laughing.  As I’m driving to the restaurant it’s pelting rain and I no sooner plant my strappy sandals on the flooding pavement, open my umbrella, there’s bolts of lightning feet away.  To the heavens I say, “Okay! You’re taking this a little too far!  We get it.” I knew who was behind this, and it turns out I wasn’t alone in my thinking.  I was greeted by my nieces and nephews giving me the look of who was behind these wedding debacles.  We were beginning to wonder if the bride and groom were even going to show up at the rehearsal dinner at all.

I woke up at 3 am the next morning having to shuffle my shin splinted, fat ass in search of antacids.  It was a 50/50 shot – I was either having a heart attack or suffering from a mixture of 2 double seabreezes, 1 sauvignon blanc, 1 bailey’s, along with the unusual combination of food I had scarfed down due to starvation, and I’m not a foodie by any stretch.  Obviously my stomach was acting like a cement mixer churning it all because to the dismay of some, I woke up.

The day of the wedding I hid for fear of anything else that could go wrong and showed up right along with every other guest.  The wedding was thoughtful, beautiful, the weather was perfection, and the bride didn’t scooter down the aisle but looked magnificent perched on a bar stool.  She danced her first dance on her broken ankle.  Their love song selection prior, during, and after the ceremony did impale some of the divorcees like a deer on a wrought iron fence with the spear finials because they told me so, not that the running mascara on their faces wasn’t enough of a telltale sign.  They were still crying trying to re-group at the cocktail hour, and as much as I can sympathize with them, I know unless you move forward you’ll always be stuck in the past and you’re not going back there.

With that said, my new Sister-in-law has many wonderful adventures that lie ahead with this family who has embraced her wholeheartedly with so much love and admiration.  In my heart I do believe my Sister-in-law, Barbara, has been with our family in spirit on multiple occasions since her passing and has made her presence known at my niece’s bachelorette party, in my great niece’s crib, preventing my getting a ticket twice within 14 hours, pennies left on a pillow, my nephew’s house (her childhood home), via song choices that “just” happen to come on the radio at inappropriate moments, and the crowning moment of this push & shove wedding.  For as many of my family members that embrace these signs, there are just as many who are uncomfortable with it, and I respect that.  In my world, spirits just want us all to know that you continue to be loved  and watched over by them, and have brought peace to so many that are grieving.  Some might even give you a little push or a shove so that you will acknowledge.

I will be writing about a woman I met over a loveseat.  Her name is Marion, a Medium and Spiritual Healer.  My Mother , Jenny, inserts herself quite a bit through Marion, and she describes Jenny as Lily Tomlin in Saturday Night Live, jawing on the phone – one ringy dingy – two ringy dingy, with pink curlers, smoking a cigarette or with a group of women doing the same.  That would be a most accurate description.