I breathe and blink. Try to contain my tears, my tumultuously overwhelmed emotions.
I can’t think of what to say.I love you, a hundred times in a row?
Then, I see a ukulele on a little stand on the stage. And I have an idea.
I hold up a finger and leave Wes at the altar. Retrieve the instrument. Stand in front of him, hold a deep breath, and then start playing the song that started it all.
“Marry Me,” by Train.
Somehow, my voice is steady and clear, and my fingers know their marks. The music takes over, and I sing the song again. This time, directly to him. And now it means more than ever.
As the last notes quaver in the air, I finally have words inside me for him.
“I’m living for you, Wes. Maybe it was Grandma praying without ceasing, demanding that God give us all a miracle. Maybe it was you and your love that killed the leukemia. Maybe it was…just a random miracle. A fluke of nature. I don’t know, and I don’t care. I just know I’ll be thankful, every moment of every day that I’m blessed to spend with you. I love you, Wes. More than my heart can bear, and more than my words can express.” I choke on a laugh, and address the minister. “Now, buster, you’d better pronounce us married, or I’m gonna kiss him anyway.”
The minister laughs, a deep, guffawing belly laugh. “You’ve already shown that you take each other through sickness and health. So I guess all I need to ask is if you, Westley, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, come what may?”
Westley nods. “I do.”
“And do you, Jolene, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
I nod eagerly. “I do.”
“Then, by the power vested in me by the State of California, I pronounce you married.” He addresses me. “You may kiss your husband.”
I lean up into him, his face in my hands. And I kiss him.
I don’t hear the cheers, or the band striking up. I just hear my heartbeat, and his, beating together.
Epilogue
Just…Living
Jolene
“Mama!” Our son totters up to me, wobbling on unsteady legs, and falls against my shins, clinging to my legs and grinning up at me. “Up.”
I pick him up, toss him gently, and catch him against my chest. “Hi, Bug. Did you get it?”
He has one chubby, brown little fist clutched tight. “Got it.”
“Let me see.”
He frowns. “Fly ’way.”
“Well, we have to let him go back to his family, right?”
He sighs, as if the weight of the decision is too heavy. “Oh-kayyyy,” he grumps. His little fist opens, and a slightly crumpled moth wiggles its wings.
He looks at me, surprised that it’s not flying away. Then back to the moth. “Fly ’way?”
“You did have him squeezed pretty tight, there, Bug.”
We call him Bug because he loves bugs. Moths, spiders, ants, caterpillars, bumblebees, if it’s a bug or an insect, he loves it and wants it to be his friend.
He’s eighteen months old, and we adopted him the day he was born. He’s Black, and beautiful, and full of joy and wonder and impossible amounts of boundless energy. His hair is impossible to keep clean, because he’s always grubbing in the dirt for bugs. He’s always got scraped knees for the same reason. I love him more than reason, more than life itself. His name is Charles Inigo Britton, aka Charlie Boy, aka Charlie Bug, aka Bug.
The moth beats its wings again, flutters them, and then wafts up into the sky, and Charlie claps his hands together in glee.
