Baby sisters getting married and how that relates to dead husbands.

My baby sister is getting married in October. Her name is Minna (her real name is Melinda but we all call her Minna). Baby girl is the flower girl, I am a bridesmaid. Dan was supposed to officiate the wedding like he did for my other sister 4 years ago. Ever since Minna was a young teenager she wanted Dan to do her wedding. She meet Dan when she was 8 years old and he was very much a big brother to her. He called her munchkin (shes really short) and took her out driving before she had her licence. The night Dan died, After everything happened my family was sitting in the dark in the living room, it was somewhere around 3 am. We should have been sleeping but we couldn't so we were just sitting in the dark silently crying. I heard Minna whisper to her boyfriend "Dan was supposed to marry us, now what are we gonna do" I said "I heard that Minna" It's the first real thing I remember about that night.

What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do without Dan? We cry a lot. We yell at him a lot. We carry on anyway. When Minna got engaged it was a huge family secret that her fiance let us all in on. She had no clue. It was awesome. They were so happy that day. Her fiance by the way is pretty much perfect and baby girl is totally enamored with him. I think much like Minna was enamored with Dan. We were so excited when they got engaged. Dan missed it. He missed the whole thing. He missed seeing his munchkin so happy with the man she deserves.

Today was Minna's wedding shower. It was a good day. It was a great shower. As a bridesmaid I was in expected to contribute something to the shower. They put me in charge of drinks. In case your not aware that's pretty much the easiest job. In a different time I would have been in charge of almost all of it, I would have been assigning jobs. But not now. Now i'm in charge of drinks and I am just fine with that. Honestly its really all I can handle right now. I think the maid of honor was worried about how I would be on a day like today. I think she had good reason.  She kept asking me all day how I was doing.

Not only do I think of how Dan is missing out on Minna getting married (man it's gonna suck when baby girl gets married) but I remember our wedding of course. How in love we were. My wedding shower, how excited I was to marry Dan and start our lives together. What most people think of when someone else gets married is back to their own wedding. Our wedding was the happiest day of my life (and I think Dan's too). I wish I could have gone home after the shower today and told Dan about how nice it was and reminisce with him about our wedding so long ago. He would probably say something like "Jennifer will you marry me again. We should get married again. PRESENTS" But I didn't do that because he's not here. And like everyday I spent the large majority of it thinking in my mind about how hes not here, but today there was a wedding involved.

So a few days ago I went to the store to get a wedding card. In case you don't know wedding cards are all full of mushy love stories and happily ever afters. I had that once. Picking out a card was crazy hard. That was one of those times I wasn't thinking about it being hard so I hadn't prepared myself, I read a couple cards and felt like sitting on the floor and crying. Another option was to just give up and leave the store. Both sounded better then what I did which was take several deep breathes and say to myself "just do this already"  I quickly glanced at a card a grabbed it. I don't remember what it said (sorry Minna) Then I got a second card for a smaller gift I got her. I didn't read that one either, I picked it because I liked the picture on the front. So then this morning when my friend asked me how I was doing in a text I replied "you know what sucks ass. Picking out wedding cards for your sister" except I didn't text it to my friend. I texted it to my sister. you know the one the cards were for. Yup that was awesome. Luckily she has tact and pretended she didn't get it.

I wanted to get her something special. Something to remind us of Dan but not something sad, after all its a wedding. When I graduated from college, I went shopping for a dress to wear under my gown. Like all college students we were dirt poor. I came home very discouraged because I couldn't find anything I felt good in that we could afford. The next day Dan took me out on a date. He took me to the mall and started picking out dresses for me. He assured me that I would be getting an awesome dress and he didn't care how much it cost. When Dan decided something like that you weren't gonna win and you should just accept it. So I did, and we had a great day shopping together. He carried all my clothes around for me. He gave me his opinion on every one and often said "we can do better" Finally we found the perfect dress. It was black with red cherries on it. I loved it. He loved it. He bought me the dress and made me wait outside so I wouldn't know how much it cost. He came out of the store with my dress and something small in his hand. he said "I got you something, you have to promise to wear it to graduation." Then he put it in my hand. It was a little button that said "I'd kick your ass, but this is my best dress" Dan would say that button was me. That is how Dan always thought of me. Fierce and willing to put up a fight if I needed to but with tact and grace and knows when not to. Able to kick ass, but not wanting to because she'd rather wear her pretty dress.

So I gave this pin to Minna today to use as her "something borrowed" yes she has to give it back. But I want her to wear it somewhere on her wedding dress. It can be hidden. Just a reminder of Dan. If Dan were here he might tell you something like "kick ass munchkin, but not in your pretty dress unless you really need to."

I wrote a book about my grief, you can read it here: Carry on Castle