The Wedding Invitations

We had decided that we were going to get married. No big proposal, we just discussed it often since we had moved in together and had finally settled on a date. My birthday to coming year. So being very young at the time, I was 19 and he was 20 we decided to keep it small and get married in the same small little church that his parents were married in.

Jim was working all the time so most of the preparations fell to me and his mom. I don't remember where I got the information to order our wedding invitations, but I did and even though we were keeping the wedding small I was informed to order a lot of invitations to send out to relatives on both sides that would never show up but would like an invitation none the less.

There is one reason that I will never forget the day that my wedding invitations arrived. The UPS Truck drove into our driveway. Jim was already home from work. Unusual for him but it was to windy for them to work, not unusual in the MI winter. It was March 9, 1991 I know that because as I was getting the box from the UPS man the phone rang.

Jim answered it and as I sat the box on the table and opened it up he says to me that I need to take the call.

I'm like "You talk to them, I'm busy, I can't wait to see how they look."

He says "No, you have to take this call, it is about your dad."

Then I took the phone because my dad had just gone in to the hospital to have a tumor removed. He had the surgery and we had talked on the phone the night before.

On the other end of the phone was my dad's girlfriend. She told me that he had passed away suddenly in the night. Of course I was devastated. Now I was planning a trip to my father's funeral and our wedding was the very last thing on my mind.

Life is bittersweet. Unexpected events can knock the wind right out of a person. I know that my father's unexpected death really knocked the wind out of me. I think I was running on auto-pilot for some time through the wedding planning to come.

I will never forget the day that my wedding invitations came in the mail. I went within a matter of minutes through the roller coaster of emotions from joy and excitement to despair and dread. I survived with a lot of love from Jim and I still survive remembering the love that was and thankful for the love I have.