20 years ago I got married.
20 years ago we had an epic 5 day Easter weekend of 2005 party that was kicked off when the first guest, driving the 15.5hr 1400km from Brisbane, rang on the Tuesday morning saying: I’m so excited, I’ve already got my pants on!!
It ended the following Tuesday when we loaded up dogs and wedding gifts and returned to our home at the time in Swan Hill and cracked a bottle of Grange Hermitage wine that Pete had given to me for my 21st birthday 4 years earlier with the statement: We’ll drink it on the bridal table.
For those 5 days we celebrated and caught up with friends, laughed, loved, created memories and stories that are still told to this day with sunken boats in the lake, a giant plastic ram, and table decoration Easter eggs that were placed on compromising positions and photographed using the disposal Kodak cameras on the tables.
For weeks and weeks I have been in complete and total angst around this anniversary day.
I knew I wanted to do something for it, but I didn’t know what. I burst into tears when talking with people about how much I was struggling to work out what the ‘right thing’ was.
Something. Nothing. Everything.
I wanted to do it all. But anything I was thinking about doing, I kept thinking about doing it on my own and how much I didn’t want to be alone. And how much it was going to hurt doing it.
It took the wise words of a child who looked at me and said: Mum, unfortunately it doesn’t matter what you do… you’re doing it without Dad. You’re going to be doing it on your own.
I cried a lot at that, because that - in a nutshell - was actually the problem.
Deep down I absolutely knew it didn’t matter what I did or didn’t do. I was going to do it without the only other person this day is special to. And I actually needed to do it on my own.
I loved being married and we had a good one. Full of laughs and love and happiness and challenges and arguments and experience and firsts and lasts and of child bearing and raising and job changes and house moves and memories.
I was a young 20yo when we started dating but I knew there was something different with Pete.
6 weeks after we started dating he told me he would marry me tomorrow.
We both just knew we were each other’s people.
It didn’t mean it was all smooth sailing.
Nothing and no one is perfect.
But we were perfect for each other.
And there were some extraordinary highs and some soul searching lows, but not ever… on any single occasion … did I think he didn’t have my back, nor did I not have his.
There was only 5 days in our almost 19 years together we didn’t speak, and not a day went past that didn’t include a ‘love you’ when either of us left for the day or went to sleep.
And so when I don’t have that person to celebrate 20 years since we were married with, I felt so sad. I have cried and cried so much about it in the last month.
Adding to my angst was that for weeks and weeks I had searched and searched for our wedding DVD and could not for the life of me locate it.
I knew I had a copy. I remember packing it when we moved house 5 years ago. But the tub it should have been in, it was not.
It had made me scream in rage and desperation as I opened and reopened all the tubs and boxes in our shed and searched bookshelves, and hiding places, and all of the places I could even imagine I had put it for safe keeping and many places it shouldn’t be.
I wanted to show the kids the day. How much fun it was. How young we were. The special people to us who have since died that recorded their good wishes on it.
The DVD has only ever seen the light of day once. Pete and I watched it when we got it back from the photographer/ videographer. Then it was packed in a box with our left over invites and rsvp cards and spare CONARGO CHURCH stickers that one of the groomsmen had created in line with the famous Conargo Pub sticker.
It took until last weekend when I had set about actually physically opening every.single.tub.and.box in the shed over the course of a morning when I finally admitted defeat and that maybe it just wasn’t meant to be found.
Then the youngest child matter of factly looked at my despair, asked again what it looked like as we fruitlessly looked back though the tub it should have been in for the 20th time … and then she found it. Exactly where it wasn’t meant to be, but so obvious I had looked over it a thousand times. It wasn’t even in a box.
The kids and I watched it together. With the eldest dialling in from afar on FaceTime.
It was exactly as I remember. All the laughs. The fun. The happiness. The people. I cried watching it alone the first time but when I watched it again with the kids it just made me happy.
They cried, though. It was their Dad as they’d never seen him. Playing with the dogs they’d only heard stories of. Their Mum as a young, excited, happy bride.
It was them watching their parents promise to love one another till death do they part… and knowing that did happen almost 14 years later.
The irony that I walked into the church using the first 45 seconds of The Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony and my reality now has not been lost on me.
We laughed at how people had changed, but absolutely had not. Despite the passage of time.
Sadly though, when we moved I had thrown out the 2 VHS copies and only kept the one of the 3 DVD copies of the event. But we discovered the DVD has corrupted files on it, so we now only have the wedding reception and the photo taking on record … no reception. No grandparent interviews.
Ironically, the older VHS technology would have had it all.
Then I took myself away for my anniversary to The Lake House in Daylesford.
It was a place and restaurant we had wanted to experience and declared, when we didn’t do much for our 10th anniversary, that we would go for our 20th.
Booking it, going. It was all anxiety riddled.
Did I really need that extravagance on my own? Did I need to give myself such a grand gesture when it was just me going? It took weeks of convincing myself it was ok and what I needed. The kids spent many days saying it was ok.
And it was, but it also wasn’t.
The trauma of Pete dying within hours of farewelling the kids means that when I go away, they are petrified the same thing will happen to me - I won’t ever came back. I had a child tearily tell me this. How scared they were of me going away. They will forever have a deep-seated fear that they know the worst case scenario can actually happen when you least expect it.
Also despite Pete dying 6 years ago, I haven’t had 3 days to sit with my grief totally alone - without kids, work, pets, responsibilities.
The idea, of deliberately putting myself into a position where I knew I was going to hurt my heart … that was harder to get myself prepared for.
But I went. The Villagers vowed to look after the kids. And the kids argued they were perfectly capable of looking after themselves and each other.
I arrived at the most amazing room with flowers and a bottle of bubbles on the table.
I burst into tears on the poor man showing me to my lodgings.
I cried so hard knowing they colluded and arranged it without me knowing. That they had pushed me out the door to make sure I went, and messaged each other over ETAs to make sure I started my trip knowing I was loved.
The day of my anniversary I knew would be hard. But also, I knew how amazing that day 20 years ago was. And I loved sitting in the memory of it.
I wandered around just looking at shops, nothing really making my heart happy, but also not anything making it any sadder. My tears flowed every amazing message I got from people and their heartfelt messages of love. And it was ok.
Dinner was as amazing as it should have been.
I wore my wedding shoes. Complete with all their war wounds from wedding photos in a shearing shed and an overly excited dance floor where we danced the chicken dance and the Hokey Pokey as our bridal waltz. I loved the shoes the moment I saw them in the shop. I still love them now.
The next day, though? That emotional hangover hit HARD.
I woke up feeling so lost. A deep inside feeling of emptiness and of being alone. I felt unanchored.
I haven’t felt it that deeply like that for a long time.
I drove around the countryside of Daylesford, Castlemaine and Kyneton literally just looking for some direction. For something to fill in the void I was feeling.
Food, wine, shopping, driving, singing in the car being busy… nothing was making the feeling go away.
Funnily enough, at points during the day, strangers filled my cup with the oddest of conversations as I wandered lost around the streets of the towns.
And at the end of 3 days on my own, I had eaten and drunk my way around the region and sat with myself and felt so lonely and empty and, weirdly, ok and not ok with it… all at the same time.
Being alone was exactly I needed. And it hurt and was harder than I imagined. I walked away from it with a renewed sense of gratefulness for what I had. And a deep reminder of what I had lost and how I’m more ok with it than I want to be. And just how exhausting holding up the facade of being ok, and also letting the hurt in, is.
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