2 Weddings and a Memorial

June 16, 2006 | Category: Family, It's a Trip

It was around now, so many years ago it seems, that I first met CD.

I was giving a technical seminar at the airport hotel in Milwaukee. He was the technical specialist sent to make sure that the rented systems weren't destroyed by my students.

At 6 in the morning, I threw on some sweats and pulled a baseball cap on backwards and checked the conference room setup.

There he stood, dressed in black. No expression. He barely looked at me.

As I entered the room, he told me calmly that the seminar wouldn't start for 3 hours. I told him I knew, because I was giving it.

He flicked his eyes at me. I stared back.

Oh, I thought you were a kid. Couldn't wait for class.

No, but thanks for saying so.

We locked eyes and didn't look away. I felt so bold I practically started laughing from nervousness. Then he gave me a tiny smile, just in his eyes. And he watched me like that for the rest of the day. I could feel him looking. By sunset, we were sitting in the grass, looking at stars and watching planes land. And holding hands.

It was messy then; who knew it would get even more so?

But I wouldn't take it back. Not for anything.

I love my husband with all my heart. I listen for him at the door in the late afternoons. I reach for him in my sleep, making sure he's there (before blatantly stealing his pillows). Sometimes, when he kisses my neck, I feel so much that my head literally explodes.

The first few years we were together, he brought me flowers every Friday without fail. Sometimes he'd picked them, sometimes they were delivered in swaths of ribbon from a fancy florist.

I never specifically wanted to marry CD. I just figured we'd spend our lives together, see how that turned out for 50 years or so. But he was a stickler for making it proper and legal and official so we did.

At the wedding, a ceremony we made up out of bits of all sorts of traditions, we included a poem by the Icelander Jonas Hallgra­msson: "Journey's End/Feralok" I loved it since the first time CD read it to me in its original, from which the English seems to pale:

I know where all hope ---
where my whole world ---
flames with the fire of God.
I throw off the chains
of thought, I fling
myself into your soul.

My wedding was bittersweet for my friend Laura (of: Impossible Garden). She and her companion at the time were at the end of their relationship. Their sweetness for each other, and sadness, evident.

Tomorrow, Laura marries. Her wedding to the man she met a few years ago will take place at noon. It is an amazing moment for her, and all who love the couple.

So it should be a happy week, a flurry of chaos and love.

But there is also a sad anniversary tugging at me. Pulling my thoughts.

It was just over a year ago that we said goodbye to my Uncle, Michael Mohr. There hasn't been a day that has gone by that we haven't missed him. It has become a litany that I fear only grows longer as the years go by - as children we have only new people ahead to meet and love... as adults, we have them to lose.

Mike was incredibly special. If you asked what he did, he'd tell you simply that he was a teacher. Behind his modesty, he left a score of people who mourn him still. And I will close this week, and this post, with a link to the internet memorial that has been built by his friends, his co-workers, and his students.

Missing Mike: HERE

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