Losing Rene?

Ch. 7

It was one Saturday, two months before their college graduation that Jamie had slipped away under false pretense and traveled the two and a half hours to my house. After another nervous meeting with me, he had once again secured my blessings, this time for Rene's hand in marriage.

He returned to the college that afternoon and then, during a moonlit beach stroll, after a romantic candlelight dinner the following evening, he popped the question to Rene.

Their engagement had been a short one. Lasting only two and a half months long, it was barely long enough to plan and schedule everything for today.
The two of them had made a promise to each other when they started dating, that they wouldn't have sexual contact of any kind until their wedding night and they both felt they had waited long enough.

Arriving at the front of the church sanctuary, I turn and face my little girl. Carefully I assist her in raising her veil, an ornate, white veil that signifies her sexual purity.

The minister stands holding a Bible and facing us. Once the veil is lifted and I turn back to the front, he begins, addressing everyone in the room.

"Who here among us gives this delicate young woman to be married to this man?"

The words, they escape my mouth even before I have a chance to contemplate their weight. "Her mother and I do."

And with that simple sentence, I handed my only child over to another man. Jamie will now take my place and be responsible for her health and welfare, and her physical and emotional well-being for the rest of her days.

I move around my daughter and as Jamie replaces me at her side, I take my seat next to the woman whom Rene now refers to as her mom, Connie.

Connie and I had exchanged vows just one year and four months ago in the exact same spot that Jamie and Rene now stood. It had been a simple ceremony in which the bridesmaids consisted of Connie's three daughters, with Rene serving as Connie's maid-of-honor. 

Connie takes my hand in hers and I give it a gentle, comforting squeeze. She rests her head on my shoulder and tears begin to roll down my cheeks as mixed emotions of joy, sadness, loss, and love all simultaneously begin to overwhelm me.

I wipe my eyes with my free hand as I watch Rene and Jamie each take a lit candle from opposite sides of a candelabra. Together they use those candles to simultaneously light a single candle in the center of the candelabra, before blowing out their individual candles, signifying that which was happening to them now, was as described in the Bible, "...and the two shall become one..."

After replacing their now unlit individual candles back in the candelabra, Rene and Jamie then return to their place in front of the minister. At the same time, Connie tilts her mouth towards my ears and gently whispers to me. What she says is a quote she had heard long ago and now feels will be perfectly comforting to me at this moment.

"A son is your son until he takes a wife. A daughter is your daughter, for the entirety of her life."

Somehow through the tears clouding my eyes, I smile, as I can now clearly see .  .  .  I have received the best of both.