The Wedding Approaches: Instalment Three

"A three thousand dollar jewel..."


At my standard sprint pace I was gathering goods to leave the office for a series of appointments then the clinic.
"I'll do the banking if you like. I have a meeting there anyway about the merchant stuff..." I offer to Elaine. They look at me dubiously in the office. I continue, "You know, I do know how to deposit funds. I can handle it. So... this envelope?"

I have so much on. Let's face it, I always do :) This impending event, the blessed wedding, is frustrating me no end with its constant intrusion into an already strained schedule. God forbid when, like this week, people have jerked the chain on me: no-showing me and not calling, changing appointments last minute, various things not arriving as they were meant to (not least of all my bridal gown heading off on its own to France, apparently. Still don't have it).

Sure enough in my bag as I exit were several last minute wedding invitations to be jammed in the nearest postal reciprocal somewhere on my journey. I bolt from the office.

Ahem, well...I forgot to deposit the cash at the bank yesterday (don't tell Elaine!). This morning I frantically stripped my bag looking for the envelope... Did I put somewhere "safe"? I'm looking about the office, flinging stacks about, "Did they have no faith and take it themselves?" I text Elaine, in a disguised confession: "do you recall where I put that envelope...?"

Before she replies there is a knock at my door. The postman. He never comes to the door. Our mailbox is a significant and steep distance from our door...

"Can I help you?" I smile.
"I think I can help you actually." The postman says, "Looking for anything?"
Ok, a cryptic postie.
My true answer would have been , "Patience." However, before I could summon a polite response he procured an envelope.
An envelope with over $3000 cash in it and several cheques.
THE envelope.
"You posted this yesterday" he grinned

"What?!"
He chuckled at my astonishment.
"But, but...how?!"

Trying to get the mail in the mailbox before the 6pm pick up the night before, I had stopped at our local box, car still running and deposited the wedding invitations, before leaping back in. This postman saw me doing it as he was about to do the pick up.
"When I was pulling the mail out a few coins fell out of the pile you'd just put in, so I investigated. Lucky you had the return address on it!" (Bless you, Elaine, for your choice of envelope (disguised cash transportation). I shall never again laugh at the few coins you put in to be "absolutely exact".)
"Even luckier that I saw you, so when you answered the door I could return it."

Messy, exuberant gratitude gushed from me. I offered him cash reward which he had to refuse.

What great integrity this man had. It was mostly cash: no-one would have ever known if he had kept it. Yet not only did he return it, he went out of his way to do it. A good man :)

He left wishing us "all the best for our wedding" and for a moment I wondered "Is he psychic?" then recalled that the envelope had been disguised amid wedding invitations...sigh...

Invasive rite of passage is this wedding upon my usual schedule madness.
And what a jewel this man was amongst it :)

The Wedding Approachs: Instalment Two

"Ivory is close to Aubergine..."

I don't usually talk to people at the gym. I'm in and out, very focused when I'm there for I don't have a lot of spare time. But of course only last week...

"You have a gorgeous shape!"

Rivulets of sweat are running down my spine, the weight of the squat rack cutting the flesh on my shoulders (it ain't pretty when I'm training) as I lift my gaze to a warm, welcoming smile. I hook the rack up and run my hands self consciously over any lumpy bits,

"Thanks."

"I'm a dressmaker and your shape would be perfect to work on. Just so you know I'm not perving or anything. I just appreciate it." We both laugh.

At the time I remember thinking to myself "I so hope I don't need you"

Indiscernible packages arrived today. Covered in Chinese writing the only English word on them was "Shanghai"... What the?

Yes, that's right. I ordered the flower girl and bridesmaid dresses online.

They have arrived.

Ok, well some dresses have arrived. What I ordered wasn't what emerged from the packages.

There are two colours I have nothing to do with: ice blue and purple. ("Purple": even saying it sounds like you're puking) Both look rubbish anywhere near me and I return the favor. So as my excited seven year old and I tear apart the first bag what should rupture forth;

PURPLE!

"Oh Mum! Its SO beautiful!" She's dancing about delightedly, holding the dress to her.

"Oh dear god..." came my dismayed utterance

"What a wonderful surprise, Mum!"

"Wonderful..." with all the enthusiastic tone of a Monty Python "hooray". I grab up the "receipt" trying to make sense of it. "What the...?" Nothing.

"What's in the other bag, Mum?!"

With dread my eyes slip sideways toward the other package. Bridesmaid dresses. We brave it:

And once again, although right colour, completely foreign dresses to what was once ordered.

I hit the inbox, find the number and call them.

The person I had all my transactions with was "Sarah".

There had been no indication that they were coming from China. Or that "Sarah" has even less English than I have Cantonese.

"Sarah, I ordered the dresses in Ivory."

"Yes. Ivory. Yes. Yes." Within her voice she's smiling broadly.

"They're purple!"

"Aubergine."

"Excuse me?"

"The dress is Aubergine." Sarah's still smiling, evidently quite proud.

"No. No. On every receipt, every email they are ivory!"

"Ah well yes, ivory is very close to aubergine." I am informed with stoic authority.

"Ah, no its not. Ivory and aubergine are very different!"

"On our chart there are close....have look at website" Sure enough on their colour chart on the site for some obscure reason there is no sequential order in the colours; ivory is right next to aubergine. Regardless on every receipt, order form etc I had ordered "ivory".

"They are close."

"So is the wedding they are to be worn at, Sarah!" This isn't going anywhere...

Sigh...

My daughter now has the dress on and is spinning and twirling in front of the mirror, her delighted smile brighter than the aubergine itself. I can't help laughing. "Ivory is close to Aubergine."

I email our magnificent florist, a gifted artist, for somehow she will save this

"Elaine, a challenge in improvisation is upon us..."

Then search my bag for the card Imogen, the dressmaker at the gym, gave me. I don't usually speak to people at the gym...

I cannot help looking at the handmade beading and cringing at the thought of a six year old in a sweat shop slaving over my bargain dresses. Goddamn that! :(

"Improvise, adapt and overcome."

It was the catch cry when I was in Infantry in the Australian Army. I carry it through life. And it seems this approaching event is as tactical as any enemy contact I'd known before.

This wedding may well become a mastery in camouflage and concealment. :)

MH

The Wedding Approaches: Instalment One

Its so easy to forget what you're doing! There is such anticipation, such expectation upon a wedding I can now understand how easily one can forget they are actually getting married.

A month out from our own wedding and as expected all that is planned, ordered, organised and hoped for starts to intensify. And fall apart. And change. And unravel. And develop. And so much more. I should probably be devastated, a little traumatised, tantrum enhanced perhaps but the humour in this is just too rich... I have to share this journey.

And so you're welcome to join me over the next month.

I'll be doing it in instalments. Notifying through facebook, twitter and for those following on here. Hope you enjoy.

Instalment One:

The invitations that were meant to go out over three weeks ago have still not gone out. I find this out four weeks before the wedding through friends sending me casually worded text messages pointedly but not absolutely saying, "Just making sure you have our postal address. Here it is again..."

No invites. This is despite the "rush order" recommended (for a convenient extra $150, of course). On the website it states that the invitations will be delivered 5 working days after the approved print mock-up. This is reiterated to me upon a phone call to the company, fitted in between web design meetings, patient appointments, frantic meetings with financial team, school pick up...

"That mock up that was approved 4 weeks ago? Is that the mock up you're referring to?" I ask her. I'm driving the mobile office, hollering at the touch screen even though the microphone is up behind the rear view mirror because a visual helps you to be heard on a blue tooth apparently.

"Oh well, " I can hear her smiling,"we've had a long weekend in Victoria and that would have delayed the process."

"For three weeks?"

"Yes." She happily chirps.

"Uh, no. I'm afraid no." Couldn't help laughing, "Those invitations need to be out. Today."

"We can have them express post to you tomorrow."

"How about you express post them to the people invited? The addresses are on the envelopes."

"We don't provide that service, I'm afraid."

"Well...lucky you provide refunds and discounts, isn't it?" I'm smiling. She's appropriately wary now...the saga unfolds.

So text I resort to. I'm sending out text massages to all that I do have the numbers of (many relatives, friends, colleagues, etc, I do not ) just giving them the heads up of date and time. Feel free to text me if you feel I've lost your postal address too :)

Now there is a dignified wedding invite :) Text.

If the guests are lucky they may receive an invite in the mail while we're on our honeymoon, so they can revel in the joy of us married already.

In the meantime I think the wedding party are still coming. So at least there will be two of us.

MH

We are but residents, alongside many others, upon a planet that is shifting, aching in despair. Every resident, all species, are effected. All are trying to communicate warning. Even the human.
Put aside the cognitive superficiality of policy, politics and process... We are all in this together.
Feel this. Heal this.

Throw glitter in her grave...

My mother died suddenly.
The kind of "suddenly" that has the police walking up your path and knocking at your door to inform you "suddenly". The "We need you to identify the body" suddenly.

Our father was terminally ill and incapacitated (he left us only months after Mum). As such my sister and I entered a world of "arrangements" that were directly foreign to us: death certificates and autopsies, diversions and decisions...
We sat down with the funeral director to organise the service itself and I curbed my tongue for the most part as he, with all the sweetness and sympathy of a well trained salesman, showed us through coffin brochures and flower arrangements.
I was opting for a cheaper coffin. My sister was leaning toward the fully upholstered, satin lined, Latvian Orthodox version at which the gentleman was nodding understandingly (chi-ching).
I was forced to remind Linda that we were only going to look at it for 30 minutes then its permanently in the dirt (don't start me on the burial choice!) which was met with the director's disapproving frown. My practicality was plainly eating into his commission.
Linda broke into discussion with a friend and I took the time to grab the director's attention...

"At the cemetery..."
"Yes, Ms Hocking?"
"Could you please throw glitter into the actual grave prior to our arrival?"
He sat back and stared at me, his shock clear upon his face. "Well I can honestly say I've never heard this before." He replied with a smile. "Any way in particular?..."

The service at the church complete, the procession had arrived for the graveside service, and my young children and I lead the congregation to the graveside.

My children and my niece, my mother's grandchildren, were young: 8, 6, 4 and 4 years old. As we walked down the funeral director approached me (he had realized at this stage I wasn't lacking compassion, I was just on good terms with "death".)
"I have four balloons for the children to release during the service." he whispered.
I was concerned, "I don't know...it would be better if you had eight. Could you summon another four? It would work better if they got a keeper each too."
"Ah...no. I just got four..."

The service began.
It was summer in Australia: the light bright and brilliant and warm.
As we stood beside the grave, my mother cradled upon it, our hearts once heavy, lightened as we looked down:
The very walls of the freshly cut earth of the grave sparkled. The light caught upon the glitter sending coloured shards, dazzling and divine from the earth itself. It was spectacular.
The funeral director leaned in and said, "That is amazing! What made you think of it?"
"I needed my children, my family to see my mother going into light, not into a cold, dark abyss."
"Of course." he smiled,"Do you mind if we use that from now on? I have a child's funeral tomorrow..."

The kids to their delight were then handed the balloons and upon the closure of prayer invited to release them. None of them wanted to let go of their balloon. Would you when you were 6?
"Helpful" relatives started using loud voices at the children,
"Let go, Maddy!" "
"Teagan, let go of your balloon and watch Nana fly like an angel!"
"Jack, let go of Nana!"
Jack burst into traumatised tears, "Nooo! NO letting go of Nana"
I brought out my Army voice, "Everyone stop!"
I squatted down to the kids, engulfing in cuddles,

"Its okay guys. The idea is you let go when YOU are ready to let go. If you're not ready then you hold onto that balloon until you are. No-one else can decide it for you."

Within only a few minutes, by their own choice, one by one, they each let go of their balloon and we watched each one soar into the deep blue.


Grief is such a unique journey: no-one else can decide it for you.
You let go only when you are ready to let go.
Hold onto that balloon until you are.

Melissa Hocking 2011