Beautiful ladies in wonderfully matching dresses, hair that took hours to manipulate, and all matching the colors of the flowers that lace the centerpiece of this room.  These are the ladies that men go to great lengths to keep wrapped up in because they are far and few between in regards to their grace, loyalty, and undying ability to love men like us.  Opposing the ladies are men in suits whose cummerbund matches the ladies dresses which again match the flowers.  These are the type of men women get lost in, not because they are in suits, because these are the men that all women dream of finding and spending the rest of their days wrapped up in the security of a good man.  A terrific day turns to terror when the groom finds out that what he had anticipated for so many years has really not been the case at all.  Let me explain a little bit further.

Our groom, an average man in his early 30's, stepped off the love train in his early 20's.  He then knew little of love and did manly things to women, running through them faster than the wind blows through trees.  Flying through and never a second glance at the turmoil behind in his wake.  Hearts broken, minds dilapidated, and spirits crushed.  All of this until an easy speaking, rambunctious blonde came about.  She was different than these others fly by night cookie cutter candy stripper girls that had been pre-baked at 350 degrees and shipped all over the country.  She was dirty, yet refined.  She came around often but was never pushy or clingy.  She drew in the wandering man with a steady slow hand and never any faster than his own pace.  They enjoyed the best of times and our young man had never been happier in a relationship, in a friendship, and with the one he considered to be his one and only last lover. Eventually he gave it all to her.  His money, his mind, his heart, his time, his freedom, and it was at this point he thought he was going to give her his last name and the rest of what had not already been given. That is until his terrific day turned terrible.

Here it is the big day and the groom is having a little conversation with his best friend, the Oak Tree friend.  You know the type that always is steady, strong, and firmly standing there in the ground even when the wind, our groom, was flying around and about this Oak never moved.  The conversation was a typical one between them, both sharing knowledge and truth trinkets that the other already knew but they shared them anyway more to remind themselves of how life really was than to remind the other.  The groom was an excellent communicator and expressed his sentiments lavishly and fervently and the Oak Tree was very deliberate, precise, and methodical in his exhorts.  True to their own characteristics they remained and yet accepted, as always, the differences that made them unique from one another.  It was a moment between best friends that would have won Oscars.  Until the groom hopped up from their family truth time talk and said “It feels great to finally be back on the love train with ‘Ginger’ let’s get this wedding on the road.”  The Oak Tree slowly stood up with a miniscule hesitation in his voice and a perplexed look on his solid face.  “‘Rosemary’ is who you are getting married to my friend, you haven’t seen ‘Ginger’ in over 3 years and you two broke up about 7 years ago.”  Total annihilation entered into the groom’s world but mainly disbelief.  He had just seen ‘Ginger’ this morning getting out of the shower.  He noticed her distinguished features that no other woman could have possibly shared.  Those tats, this ring, that birth mark, those moles, the facial features that were pronounced with her and her sister.  “Oak Tree you must be mistaken ‘Ginger’ and I have never been better.  I just was with her this morning watching her go through her morning routine.  I obsessed over how wonderful she looked straight out of bed and ogled every chance I could steal through the mirror as she pranced around behind me.”  Confusion sets in between the two friends and instantly a gap of calamity forms between them.  “Oak Tree please tell me this is all a joke.  I don’t even know a ‘Rosemary’ so how can I be getting married to her?”  The Oak Tree remains his constant analytical logical self and pieces the puzzle together for the tortured vexed mind of our groom. 

“Do you remember seeing the doctor after a very tragic event in your life and he placed you on a solid dosage of medication to consume regularly?”

“Hell no Oak Tree I have never taken pills, I hate taking them for colds let alone anything else.”

“So you don’t remember the three months you spent catatonic after you and ‘Ginger’ separated?”

“Are you crazy Oak tree?  I have never ……”

At this point the bride’s father walks in and asks if everything is alright but our groom doesn’t recognize him as the father of his bride ‘Ginger.’

Astonished, perplexed, and vexed with disbelief he glances at Oak Tree and realizes that this friend has never let him down before and certainly wouldn’t pick a day of this magnitude to start.  Was it real?  Had our groom displaced reality with his own more bearable version?  Had he stopped taking his medication completely and jumped into the first relationship he found?  Had he really not noticed the differences physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually in these two women?  Or had he noticed them, ignored them, and played out how his ‘Ginger’ would have reacted, how she looked, how she walked….

The truth settles into all of them and hits our groom with the same majestic hundred pound sledge that had sent him into a catatonic state only this time he feels his soul split in half, shrivel up, and die as his delusional love train derails catches fire and burns to cinders.

Run!

Run!

Run!

Away from this horrific plot that only a tormented mind could have placed into action.

“I’m sorry Oak Tree, I have to flee.  I can not go through with this.  It isn’t right.  It isn’t fair to ‘Rosemary’ it isn’t what I want.  I need ‘Ginger’ and won’t be satisfied until she is mine.  I must go Oak Tree, I will call later.”

Burning into the setting sun on two feet in his wedding suit, our groom runs.  Runs away from ‘Rosemary’ and the father-in-law he never once seen before, he runs away from a lives led astray by a demented mind. He runs away but more than that he runs toward her.  Toward the only one who was patient enough to bring him through, the only one who was kind enough to understand it would take time.  He runs toward her because she is the one he wants, she is the one he is IN love with, and she is the one he needs!  He runs and runs until his heart pumps pure acid. He runs until his lungs can’t keep up and hypoxia stops him in his tracks.  Fainted and out cold he dreams of her and those soft eyes.  She comes to him in his dreams and his reality is once again the way he wants it, with her.  But our groom is weary because she is hesitant in her ways with him.  She softly whispers in his ear where he has collapsed, “We just didn’t work out, so I left you and married him.”  She points to a familiar face and as she does his heart accelerates to beyond capacity.  Not from anger from distraught, not from failure but from love loss, and he dies emotionally, mentally, and physically at her feet weeping in his own tears because his heart couldn’t keep up with the reality that the conductor intentionally derailed his love train and his necessary reality.  Without it he discontinued hope, stopped replacing reality maniacally, and ceased to live in every aspect.

It is at this point I wake up in the middle of the night, next to ‘Ginger’ in her great glory.  Her awesome angelic like state asleep and I must give her a kiss, say my many thanks that she is right here next to me tonight.  But then again, is this ‘Ginger’ or is this ‘Rosemary’ and I am simply translating reality again…..