I once went to a wedding that took place outdoors amidst the buzzing hush of kind spectators and turning foliage.  I was accompanied by a girl who wore a clever smile and a dress the color of crushed grapes.  Her name is a blotted discoloration on the back of my mind- one of time’s little tricks to keep us alive.  The bride and groom are just names these days, both their faces and bodies are hiding behind the thick distortion of fading remembrance.  Though I can tell you little of the actual ceremony and I am at an embarrassing loss of what become of the two that thought it a keen idea to invite me to their wedding, I can tell you that I am glad I was in the number that witnessed their joining together in as sacred an institution as man can be part of.

I remember a breeze playing with the tops of tall trees and I remember a song that was either sung aloud by someone, or played back on some type of stereo.  I don’t actually recall the song.  Its melody escapes me, its lyrics evaded my capture for commitment to the snapshot of the moment, and I can’t be sure its title was ever known to me.  I do, however, remember the way it sang to them and I think that was its purpose.  A crack commando squad could have quietly taken all of us spectators out and it wouldn’t have made a difference to them.  They were not there to put on a show or marry the camera; they were there to marry each other.

I have, of course, been to several weddings since then, but my recollection of those, while sharing the same sketchy memory for details, have in some ways failed to elicit the same feeling of connection with the process.  Perhaps it was kindness of all the intentional by-standers or the forgotten girl in the grape dress, but I really could see my self, standing in the half-light of a tempered mid-day sun telling some special girl, perhaps she of the bruised dress, that I would be there to fight the fights of real life and hold her hand through the driving madness of the earth’s ellipse through the silent star laden universe.

The earth has twisted its way around the sun a few times since then.

I no longer know the girl in the purple dress. 

I can still smell the damp grass and I still feel the guilt of leaving early.  

I hope that they are in still in the throws of significance.  I wish them eternally the same wishes I did that very day.