When you lose a parent, grief becomes a quiet presence at every milestone. Happy occasions like birthdays, graduations, or a new home don’t feel quite like they should, each one ever so slightly tainted by the thought that someone so important is missing. I lost my mom when I was 17: the terminal diagnosis was quick, leaving us—me, my three siblings, and our dad—in a tornado of panic, confusion, and grief.
Just five months later, I met the man who would end up becoming my husband. It’s heartbreaking knowing how close two of the most important people in my life came to meeting one another. But, with hindsight, I now think the way it happened was central to mine and my husband’s love story. Tom—an innately patient, calm man—weathered the storm of my grief as it unfurled in infinite ways over the years that followed. It was one of the many reasons I fell in love with him.
I always knew that my wedding day would be hard without my mom by my side. I’ve had the joy of watching my friends go through the process with their own mothers—choosing a dress, visiting venues, hearing their speeches, walking down the aisle together, bickering over the little things. I wanted to find a way to access some of that for myself; to include my mom in our wedding in a way that made it feel as though she were still part of it.
About a year before the ceremony, we went to visit my dad and spent an afternoon going through boxes of memories from my parents’ wedding. We came across my mom’s dress in one of the boxes—a frilly blancmange of a dress, classically ’80s with puffy sleeves and plenty of lace. I tried to put it on (and failed—’80s sizing standards are not what they are today), and we joked about me wearing it on my wedding day.
