CHAPTER FOURTEEN | CASSIDY
DUM-DUM-DA-DA-DUM-DUM… DUM-DUM-DUM...
I must have heard the Wedding March at least a hundred times before, but the familiar melody sounded completely different now that I was the bride standing at the end of a long aisle.
My knuckles had gone white from squeezing onto the bouquet in my hands, and my stomach was doing enough cartwheels and back handsprings to merit an Olympic gold medal.
I reminded myself to take a deep gulp of fresh air, then I blinked open my eyes.
I had been to the Rose Garden at Elizabeth Park plenty of times before. Between elementary school field trips and picnics with my parents, I knew the place like the back of my hand. But, just like the Wedding March, the garden that sprawled around me in all directions now suddenly seemed completely different and unfamiliar.
The long aisle seemed to stretch on infinitely. The grass pathway cut straight ahead beneath several curved trellis archways, one after another. Each archway was completely covered with a dense, overgrown forest of thorny vines, lush green leaves, and pale pink roses. A soft summer breeze carried the delicate perfume of roses through the air, and loose pastel rose petals fluttered down like summer snowflakes.
The picturesque pathway of rose-covered archways made Elizabeth Park one of the most sought-after wedding locales in all of Hartford. But from my vantage point, the ornate rose halos that encircled the aisle might as well have been rings of burning fire; I felt less like a blushing bride and more like daredevil Evil Knievel, preparing to throw caution to the wind and hurdle myself aimlessly towards an unknown fate…
The Wedding March blared in my ears, and my eyes locked onto my destination at the end of the aisle: a gazebo that had been so completely consumed by thick braids of green ivy, that the entire structure appeared to have grown up from the earth.
You can do this, I told myself. I squeezed the bouquet harder, trying to steady the nerves that trembled in my hands. Then I took a step forward.
DA-DUM-DA-DUM…
White garden chairs lined either side of the aisle, and I knew that all eyes would be on me as I began my descent towards the altar. But I had tunnel vision; all I could see was the ivy gazebo ahead of me.
DUM-DUM-DA-DUM….
I took another shaky gulp of air as I passed under the first rose archway. Then the second. I was getting closer to the gazebo, and the butterflies swarming in my stomach grew more frantic with each step.
DA-DUM-DA-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM…
I blinked and when the gazebo at the end of the aisle came back into focus, I saw a pair of legs stride into view...
Him.
A sharp inhale inflated my lungs, and my eyes widened as Brady Hudson stepped into position at the altar in front of the ivy-covered gazebo.
He was wearing a black suit, and his dark hair was combed to the side and pushed back behind his ears. His hands were folded together at his waist, and a single rose was tucked into the front pocket of his suit jacket. He was so perfectly handsome, and he was about to be mine…
His grey eyes lit up like Christmas lights when he saw me, and his lips curled up into a secret little grin. My heart suddenly swelled and my body froze in place. A tiny gasp fluttered from my lips.
And then…
“Cassidy?” the sound of my mom’s voice shattered my illusion. I blinked and, just like that, I was snapped back to reality.
The Wedding March still played, but the melody sounded tinny and flat as it blared from the tiny speaker of my mom’s iPhone.
The bouquet that I held in my hands was just an arrangement of cheap plastic flowers that the florist had given me; a mock-up of the actual bridal bouquet that my mom had picked out earlier that day, when we ordered all of the floral arrangements for the wedding.
And the man in a black suit waiting for me at the end of the rose-covered aisle? He wasn’t my groom… he was just the venue coordinator. He had spent the last half-hour driving Mom and I around Elizabeth Park on the back of a golf cart, giving us a private tour and pulling out all the stops to convince us both that the Rose Garden was the perfect location for a summer wedding. Not that Mom needed any convincing: she was already smitten.
“Cassidy?” my mom repeated, her voice growing more concerned. “Honey, are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” I said quickly.
Mom slid her thumb over the screen of her iPhone and the strained rendition of the Wedding March cut out abruptly. She was sitting in one of the white folding garden chairs that lined the aisle, and her eyes were dark with worry.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “You looked pretty petrified. You’re not getting cold feet, are you?”
“No!” I blurted out.
“Honey, it’s completely normal to get cold feet--”
“I don’t have cold feet,” I insisted. “I was just… imagining what it would feel like, to walk down the aisle on my wedding day… and I guess it finally hit me. It’s all starting to feel so real now…”
My voice trailed off and I felt my cheeks burn bright red. I was telling the truth: I had been imagining what it would feel like, to walk down the aisle and see Brady waiting for me at the altar. And it was all starting to feel so real...
“Oh, sweetheart!” Mom gushed. Her face instantly softened and spread into a giant smile. She stood up and wrapped her arms around me, pulling me into a tight hug. “I’ve been dreaming about this day for a long time, too!”
She tightened her grip on me for a few seconds, then she released me from the embrace and turned to the venue coordinator:
“Simon, could you give us a moment alone, please?”
“Certainly,” he nodded diplomatically, then he walked briskly down the aisle towards the park’s main road, where he had left the golf cart parked on the edge of the hot pavement.
Once we were alone, Mom sat back down on one of the white garden chairs. She blinked up at me and I noticed the fresh tears welling up in her eyes.
“Mom! Please don’t cry!” I rushed to take a seat in the chair beside her. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong,” she smiled through the glistening puddles of tears. “In fact, it’s just the opposite: everything is finally right!”
“I don’t understand…”
“Oh, sweetie,” she took my hand in hers and squeezed gently as she sniffled back the tears. “I never thought I’d tell you this, but…”
She sighed, and with her free hand she dug around in her purse and found a packet of tissues. She pulled one out and wrinkled it into the palm of her hand without using it, then she continued:
“There was a point during my treatment when I thought I was ready to finally give up. It was such a dark time, and I felt so weak… I wasn’t sure I would make it another day. Every night I spent in the hospital, listening to the machines beeping and buzzing around me, I wondered, ‘Is this it? Is tonight the night that I’m going to fall asleep and never wake up?’”
“You never told me this...” my voice cracked, and I felt the sting of hot tears forming in my own eyes.
“How could I?” she said softly, tightening her grip on my hand. “You and your father tried so hard to be strong for me. I owed it to you both to be strong, too.”
The puddles blurring my eyes overflowed, and streams of hot tears poured down my cheeks. The thought of my mother forcing herself to be strong and brave, for my sake… that broke my heart. I swallowed the sob that was building in the back of my throat, and my mother pulled a fresh tissue out of package and offered it to me.
“I just wanted to be there for you, Mom…” I whispered. I pressed the tissue into the corners of my eyes, but as soon as I soaked up the tears, fresh ones formed.
“You were there for me, Cass,” she insisted in a low, firm voice. “You were always there for me, in more ways than you even know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” Mom sniffed. “Do you know what got me through those dark times? Do you know what kept me from giving up the last bit of hope and strength that I had?”
I couldn’t speak anymore, so I just shook my head.
“This, Cassidy,” Mom said. “Whenever I felt like giving up, I reminded myself of this moment. I told myself that I had to keep fighting, so that someday I could sit right here and watch as my beautiful daughter walked down the aisle and married the love of her life.”
This time I couldn’t stop myself from sobbing. I fell forward into my mother’s arms, and we both held onto each other as we cried.
“This was the light at the end of the tunnel for me, Cass,” Mom whispered as she pulled away. She remembered the unused tissue crumpled up in her fist, and she used it to clean away the streaks of tears on her cheeks. “You have no idea how much this means to me, or how happy I am to be here for this…”
My heart suddenly felt incredibly heavy in my chest. She was right: I had known that settling down and getting married was important to my mom, but I had no idea just how much it meant to her, or that it had been her only motivation to keep fighting for her life during chemotherapy.
I felt my stomach turn over and fill with dread. Despite the summer sun scorching in the clear sky overhead, a sudden chill rattled down my spine and coated my bare skin in goosebumps.
A giant smile spread across my mother’s face and she squeezed my hand again. My mom’s joy was usually contagious; after five years of fighting cancer, I had learned to treasure every genuine smile or happy moment that we had together. But this time, I couldn’t bring myself to feel happy. I was too plagued with guilt.
Thoughts raced through my head...
How would she feel, if she knew the truth? Would she understand that I did it all for her? Would she forgive me? Or would it break her heart? Would it destroy the last shred of hope that she had left?
Fresh tears filled my eyes, and Mom plucked another tissue out of the package on her knee and handed it to me.
“This is a good thing, Cassidy,” she reminded me.
“I know,” I choked out. I tried to force a smile, despite the guilt that was swelling in my chest.
“No more crying!” she decided, slapping her palms on her thighs resolutely. Then she stood up from the chair with a level of ease that I hadn’t seen in a long, long time. “Let’s go. Maybe once we’ve signed all the paperwork, we can ditch Simon and go for a walk through the park, just the two of us!”
“Whoa,” I stammered, completely caught off-guard by my mother’s suggestion. “You want to go for a walk?!”
“For old time’s sake,” my mother nodded. “You used to love coming here when you were a little girl. Your father and I could barely keep up with you…”
Then she did something even more surprising: she leaned down and offered a hand to help me up. I blinked, and I was so stunned that the tears lining my eyes dried up almost immediately.
When Mom was discharged from the hospital, she had been so frail and weak that even the simple task of climbing up the carpeted stairs to her bedroom felt like a Herculean feat tantamount to scaling Mt. Everest. She certainly hadn’t been in any condition to suggest a leisurely stroll through the park. In fact, the last “walk” we had shared had been in the hospital, when Doctor Burke insisted that my mom hobble wearily through the corridors to avoid getting bedsores.
But the woman standing over me wasn’t the weak, cancer-ravaged person that my mother had become; the woman standing over me was strong, vibrant, happy… the person my mother had been, before the cancer took over.
I took her outstretched hand, but I used my legs to push myself up instead of testing her newfound strength.
“Wow,” I marveled, “That new medication that Doctor Burke prescribed must really work wonders… I haven’t seen you this energetic in years!”
“Actually, I haven’t been taking any medication.”
“What! Why?!”
“I don’t need it anymore,” Mom shrugged.
“Mom…” I tried to protest, but she stopped me.
“Planning this wedding has done me more good than any pill ever has,” Mom insisted. “Maybe joy is the best drug, after all…”
I sighed heavily, fighting off a fresh wave of guilt.
“Come on,” I smiled. “Let’s go find Simon, before you try racing me back to the golf cart…”
“A race!” Mom smiled playfully, nudging my shoulder with hers. “Now there’s a fun idea…”
But instead of racing, we linked arms as we made our way down the aisle and towards the park road.