45

Bennett and Marianne are exchanging wedding vows in two days. I ‘m happy that Bennett has found someone that he can share his life with, but I don’t relish what I will have to do as Bennett’s best man. I will be placing myself back in the center of a world I have tried so hard to remove myself from. I want to do this for Bennett, but toasting the happy couple with Jonas and his crowd waiting to ridicule me is the last place I will want to be on Saturday. I’ve asked Max to meet me at the basketball court tomorrow. Hopefully, she will be willing to attend the wedding with me. I could use a little X5 attitude to get me through this thing.

My parents are the two people I know that kept their wedding vows. They truly loved each other. When I was young, mom told me about the locket that dad had given her when I was born. She cherished it more than anything else in her life. I have always thought of that locket as a legacy of what could be possible in our lives.

I still wish I could have had more time with mom. I wish I had more time with both of them. Before she died, I spent hours with her in her hospital room, hoping against hope that they weren’t the last hours we would ever spend together. But mom knew she was going to die. She drifted in and out of consciousness, but each time she awoke she looked at me with great intensity in her eyes, as if she still had so much she wanted to tell me.

"Logan, I have something for you." One morning, mom gently took my hand in hers and placed a cool metal object in my palm. She closed my fingers around it and held my hand as she talked.

"Logan, your father and I had many successes and failures in our lives, but I want you to know that you are our greatest success. You have become everything we dreamed for you when you were born. You have made our lives complete." I smiled when she said those things, trying to appear confident for her, but I didn’t feel confident. How was I going to fulfill her expectations if she wasn’t around to guide me? It was then that I realized that her locket was no longer around her neck.

"Logan, this locket is yours now." She continued to hold my hand as she spoke. "I want you to have it to remember me by, to remember how much both your father and I loved you."

"Don’t say that, Mom. This is your locket. It always will be." I couldn’t accept it. Not then. If I accepted it, I would have to acknowledge that she was going to die. Mom understood that I was not prepared to do that, so she just smiled at me reassuringly as I gently moved her hair and placed the locket back around her neck. She fingered the locket lovingly as she smiled at me. The smile remained on her face as she drifted back to sleep, one hand holding her locket, and the other wrapped around my fingers.

Mom died anyway, twenty-four hours later.

A few days after the funeral, I looked for the locket in Mom’s jewelry box, but it wasn’t there. Of course, Aunt Margo got to it first. She was wearing it proudly at the next ‘family’ function. She still wears it all the time, like some kind of medallion. I don’t even know why she wanted it. She was never close to mom. I lost so much the day mom died, not only her locket, but also everything it stood for. That was the end of real love in my life. All I had left was Jonas and Margo. They have barely tolerated me all these years and are still embarrassed to be seen with me. Now, I have to go face them again.

I have never been able to ask Aunt Margo for the locket. Give me an army of Red soldiers any day, but don’t ask me to stand up to Aunt Margo. I may whine about it now, but I know I won’t do anything about it at the wedding. Aunt Margo would just love to see me make a scene like some kind of spoiled child. The truth is, I won’t do anything about it at any other time either. I am a thirty-one year old man, but I am such a coward.

I don’t know how I ever mustered up the courage to ask Valerie to marry me. Maybe it was more an act of foolishness than bravery. But we both thought we were being so daring, that we would be able to overcome our obstacles and make it work. I so desperately wanted to recreate what my parents had. They were brave enough to promise themselves to one another, and they kept their promise. I had seen a real marriage and I wanted to have one as well.

Mom and dad knew everything about each other. They didn’t hide from one another, but trusted each other completely, even with those things that they wouldn’t share with anyone else. When I would complain to mom about the way dad was, she would respond with a quiet ‘I know’, but all I could see in her eyes was her love for him. She had seen into the secret parts of dad’s soul and she loved him. She loved all of him.

Valerie and I were never able to do that. She couldn’t trust me with the part of herself she loathed. Instead she tried to kill it with alcohol. And I didn’t trust her with the part of me that could be hurt. I never really opened myself up to her. I held it back from her, but she was still able to pierce me.

Bennett is so lucky. The way he talks about Marianne, I believe they truly love and trust each other. He told me about what they have already overcome to get to this moment. They may have met accidentally, but they had to make a choice to come to this point. They chose to become partners. I hope that Bennett and Marianne find as much happiness and adventure in their marriage as my parents did.

A Toast to Bennett and Marianne

Marriage is an act of daring, which requires that we be brave enough to promise ourselves to another. It requires we entrust our most secret inner selves to them. When Bennett first told me that he had fallen in love with Marianne, I told him he was lucky to have found someone to share his life with. They crossed paths by fate, but became partners by choice. And together, they are embarking on the greatest adventure two people can share.