That's Life: Loving Sacrifices
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The groom had informally invited me to the wedding just a week before it was to took place. I was very excited, although there was not the remotest possibility of my gaining the attention of a handsome groomsman or catching the bride's bouquet.
Alas, a white gardenia was the lone flower in the rectory office where the nuptials were performed. It was the gardenia the groom pinned to the bride's dress — a navy blue frock she had worn many times before.
I immediately recognized the priest who officiated at the ceremony. He was Father Leahy, a friendly, soft-spoken priest who celebrated the 10 o'clock Sunday Mass my mother and my sisters and I attended every week.
In the quiet of the rectory, there were no guests to murmur, "What a pretty bride," or to shower the newlyweds with rice. I wished that, at least, the soprano with a mellifluous voice was present to sing "Ave Maria," as she did at weddings held in the church adjacent to the rectory. Eyes fixed on one another, the bride, Agnes, and the groom, Phillip, seemed unaware of any of the omissions.
It was the first time I had seen a middle-aged couple joined in holy matrimony. Time and worry had etched telltale lines around the corners of their eyes and across their brows, and the graying hair on the crown of Phillip's head was so thin his shiny scalp was visible.
As Agnes and Philip pledged their troth, they knew what would be required of them in fulfilling their promises. They had lived together and raised three daughters over the previous 25 years so the responsibilities, the trials, as well as the pleasures inherent in marriage were not mysteries to them.
Agnes and Phillip had already comforted each
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other during sickness — their own and their children's — overcome financial setbacks, overlooked each other's shortcomings, and experienced the joy of waking up and falling asleep side by side. The moment Father Leahy pronounced Agnes and Philip husband and wife "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit," the bride, my mother, regained what she had relinquished the day she had wed the groom, my father who was a Lutheran, in a civil ceremony at City Hall.
Because of the difference in religion, my parents had decided on a civil ceremony when they first wed. At that time, Catholics whose marriage was not sanctified by the church were banned from receiving Holy Communion. Mother never made it an issue, but Father eventually found out about the sacrifice mother had made by marrying "outside the church." A teacher in the school where my father was assistant principal broached the subject others had not been brave or bold enough to even mention. "Do you realize what Agnes sacrificed when she married you?"
For the next two months, Father Leahy came to our home once a week to give my father religious instructions on the Catholic faith, making it acceptable for him to marry my mother with the church's blessings.
As my parents turned around at the end of their wedding ceremony in the rectory, I discovered they now had something in common with all the bridal couples I had previously seen — a sparkle in their eyes, a smile on their lips. The passing years have not dulled my recollection of that special Friday or of the following Sunday when for the first time, Mother knelt beside my sisters and me at a church's altar and received Holy Communion.
Now I believe my mother and my father are happy together in Heaven. Perhaps they are even celebrating the anniversary of their wedding.
