Part 3 — We Were Planning a Wedding When Everything Changed
One afternoon, Natalie, Carrie, and I stood in a bakery arguing about our wedding cake.
By “arguing,” I mean Natalie was trying to finalize the order while Carrie insisted, passionately, that blue should count as a cake flavor.
“Blue is a color,” I told her.
“It can be both.”
“It absolutely cannot.”
Carrie crossed her arms.
“It can if the frosting is blue.”
“That still doesn’t make blue a flavor.”
She gave me the disappointed look usually reserved for adults who’d failed basic logic.
A few feet away, Natalie stared down at our seating chart.
“If Aunt Denise sits next to Uncle Rob, someone’s wearing the punch by the end of the night.”
“I’m listening,” I said.
“You clearly are not.”
“Blue cake. Punch violence. Fully caught up.”
Natalie laughed.
I remember standing there thinking how absurdly lucky I was.
By the predictions made years earlier, I shouldn’t have been functioning that well by then.
Depending on which prognosis I believed, I might not have been alive at all.
Instead, I was planning a wedding.
And arguing with a ten-year-old about frosting.
That same week, I filed the paperwork to legally adopt Carrie.
I already thought of her as my daughter.
The paperwork just needed to catch up.
Then, three weeks before the wedding, my phone rang at 11:14 p.m.
I remember the exact time because I glanced at the clock as I answered.
The man on the other end introduced himself as a state trooper.
There’d been an accident on the interstate.
Natalie had been involved.
The next few sentences came slowly, gently, as though speaking them carefully might soften them.
She hadn’t survived.
I don’t remember the drive to the hospital.
I remember fluorescent lights.
I remember a plastic chair.
I remember a nurse named Kathy refilling a paper cup with water I barely touched.
I remember getting home around four in the morning.
Our neighbor Cynthia had stayed with Carrie.
My daughter was asleep in her room, curled around a ridiculous stuffed penguin Natalie had won her at the state fair.
I lowered myself onto the floor beside her bed.
Then took her hand.
“I’m not leaving you,” I whispered.
Again.
And again.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I said it like repeating the words might somehow turn them into a guarantee.
But we’d both already learned guarantees didn’t mean much.
