i’ve been working functions at the Hotel lately–mostly weddings. As someone who is deeply ambivalent about marriage, i am constantly shaken by the apparent confidence and experience with which wealthy, attractive people plan and execute these events. Most of the couples seem to have been together for a respectable amount of time, and their families are fairly relaxed. Many of them perform their ceremonies at the Hotel, which are generally quick and devoid of sentiment. Surprisingly, the toasts are what choke up the staff. Maids of Honor who can get up and tell stories about what the bride was like in Kindergarten. Brides who are still gloating about having beat the groom in a 7th Grade Social Studies Brain Bowl. Confident people familiar with each other who grew up in a culture of sticking around. In the middle of the first catering, watching from behind a curtain with another waiter, i looked at him wide-eyed and demanded, as if we were at the movies: “People are really like this?” Check, please.

A good toast is organized around a funny but poignant anecdote that both proves the speaker’s long history with one of the newlyweds and makes an argument a., that this member of the couple is an exceptional human being; and/or b., it describes why these two were ‘meant to be’. Last night, a couple hosted a rehearsal dinner in the private dining room–a cozy space downstairs with walls of original brick and relics on the ceiling from its factory days. (Authenticity provides an extremely marketable blessing for these events.) This couple, for example, had known each other since middle school. One of the bridesmaids spoke about how the bride has been an anchor for their circle of friends since college, and that she thought the relationship the bride had with her mother had made her capable of such enduring relationships. “Oh boy,” i quietly cursed. My eyes began to water and i swallowed hard.

A week earlier, i had unexpectedly found myself on a 6:00 am flight to Charlotte for my grandmother’s funeral wearing, as fate would have it, my wedding dress. i mean, it is functional and black and i wanted to look nice. If anyone even noticed, i didn’t hear about it. No one who was at the funeral had been at the wedding, anyhow. i met my brother in the airport and my Mom at the funeral home. My grandma–“Nana”–was one of 6 sisters, and she was the last to pass away. She grew up in Miami, but lived in North Carolina for most of my life. Her life was epic, but quietly so. A legend in my mother’s memory, i had memorized a dozen scandalous stories about her by the time i was ten. Her name was Billie, which seemed bizarre to me as a child and very cool when i grew up. The strongest, most pervasive details were from her years as a missionary to Japan–a stint that included my five year old mother and her younger sister. My grandfather, who flew planes in Europe in WW2, became a test pilot when he came home. A few years later, he went down in a wooden model off the coast of San Diego and my grandmother went to Japan.

They had been married in Jacksonville, and spent their honeymoon at the Flagler Hotel in St. Augustine. The hotel is now a private college. Sitting in the backseat of one of my brothers’ cars, i passed it countless times on the way to the beach when i was a kid. i liked imagining this glamorous past that the college and my family shared. i liked thinking about my grandmother, who wore fancy rings and had a gigantic closet full of stylish clothes and shoes and who took me to church when i came to visit. Her father grew up on a plantation in south Georgia and never learned how to tie his own shoes. i spent some summers with her when i was younger, and we would eat watermelon outside on the swing and giggle as we spit the seeds onto the red clay peeking through her permanently balding grass. She had window boxes filled with real flowers. She taught me how to cross-stitch, and play the piano, and took me to the mall in Charlotte to go ice skating–the only times in my life i ever did it until once, a few years ago on a chilly day in Harlem–amazed at how it came right back. Her second husband was in the Air Force, and they lived in Turkey for a few years. She came back with a wicker elephant for me that i liked to pile all of my toys into and then take them back out, one by one. In passing, she left me a Turkish wedding ring–also called a puzzle ring. i used to love to watch her take it off and shake it apart in her hand and then slip it back together. Evidently, these rings have quite a history: “Puzzle rings, also known as Turkish wedding bands, are said to have originated in Turkey. A nobleman wanted to know if his wife was being faithful, so he gave her a ring that would fall apart if she removed it. Since she didn’t know the instructions to put it back together, he would be able to catch her infidelity.”

Riding in my aunt’s minivan to the funeral home, my uncle told us about some of the funereal drama. My step-grandfather’s daughter evidently referred to Nana as a “cougar”–she was 15 years older than him. She had also scoffed at Nana’s excessive closet, wondering where ‘she had ever worn any of this stuff’. My Mom and my aunt were livid about the location of the grave. A low-end graveyard that probably gave a Veteran’s discount with no shade. Standing by her coffin, marveling at the smooth wet slice of clay peeking out below the coffin like red velvet ice cream cake, i was sad, very hugely and softly sad–not for her death but for her abandonment. For having barely seen her over the last decade. For the long days i know she spent at her desk filling yet another journal. For the fact that she ever had to leave the Japan she loved. For that grave i know i will never be able to find again. Never visit and never tend. The gold on my finger, marrying me once again–this time to her legacy and marking the easy bond we always had–is what i will do instead. My own authentic reminder, the next time i begin to well-up at the din of forks tapping wine glasses, of the ways i’m trying to alchemize all of this desertion.