"...it's gonna be so great; it's gonna be just like my wedding day..." (Rosie Thomas)

Prologue: Random day in 1986

At the age of 13, I looked at a calendar to pick the date of my future wedding. Having 365 days at my disposal, I scanned the months and settled on the one that smells like smoky apples, sweet wood, bread baking and honey & spices... the month of longing and fulfillment.
I had a perverse need to flout the trappings of convention, too, so no weekend wedding for me. October 1st, 2001. A Monday.

October 1st, 2001:

Sarah and I were on the Bar Harbor Whale Watch tour. Every single person on the boat heaved over the railings, blue from the cold. Most of us missed the one whale who made an appearance. At the height of my personal misery, I remembered that I should be doing something else that day... what was it? My 13-year old-self whispered to me "Today's the day you were going to get married." "Oh yeah," I nodded. "sorry I let you down, kid; I know this isn't what you had in mind."

October 1st, 2003:

A dear friend of mine and her intended marry. It strikes me again, the possibility that exists on the first day of the month, the strength of beginning a venture right at the beginning.

Late September, 2005:

This year I expected to be robbed of the fall, just a bit. Another wedding, I know, is to take place. The last I heard, "sometime in November." And of all that is painful about this wedding, the blows were somewhat dulled by November, the mere vestiges of Autumn... things begin to take on graying shades. It is the first of the bleak months.

I am haunted by so much...I have always envisioned being a fall bride, walking on a carpet of rain-slicked leaves toward him, inherently certain of my footing...

When the unfortunate news of this wedding broke, the 13 year-old I used to be was silent, defeated. So I reasoned with her irrational silence. For God's sake, we don't own the fall, do we? Anyone can get married anytime they want...

Yesterday, through convoluted circumstances, I stumbled upon a vague piece of intelligence. I turned it over in my mind, knowing what it meant, but choosing to refrain from apprehending, fully, the knowledge of it.

I believe in fate. I knew, as I have known so many other disastrous truths, that it would find me out if it was indeed what I believed it was.

Tonight at the gym (I nearly talked myself out of going), I saw reflected in the glass Gordon's former roommate. I suppose I could have averted my eyes, not made eye contact with him, maybe he would have missed me (life always comes down to split second events, have you noticed?)... but I know I willed him to look at me. In the narrative of my life, I know operatives, foreshadowing (I saw this guy last week, too, but that night he stayed outside the gym and did not enter, just suddenly pivoted, deciding on a dime not to come in. I was on the same elliptical machine then that I chose tonight.), and irony when I see them. I knew what he was doing there.

"So are you going on Saturday?"

I asked him to repeat himself to stall for time.

"What are you doing on Saturday?"

"Race for the Cure."

"Oh, I thought you'd be going to Gordon's wedding."

"No. I'm not."

"So, Race for the cure, huh? That's great..."

The familiar heat of grief rose to the surface of my skin. I wondered how it is that everything I chose for myself, even before I knew Gordon, could be stolen this way.

It's as though I live in a house that was burglarized, thoroughly decimated, and then the thief came back to see me standing there surveying the damage, saying, almost apologetically, "whoops, I almost forgot this!" smiling in relief as he picks up the one item I thought had been spared.

So I gave myself one option. Stay on this machine. Do not get off until your 50 minutes are up; you are not slinking off anywhere in despair. Run on. See what the end will be.