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I Lost My Daughter Last Year – Five Minutes Before I Walked Down the Aisle, the Coordinator Whispered, ‘Your Daughter Is Here, and She Wants to Speak to You Immediately’
“How did you even know I was getting married today?”
“I’ve checked your and Charles’ Facebook pages every few months since Emily died.”
For some reason, that made the promise Sophie had kept feel even heavier.
“You’ve had something from my daughter for a year?”
“Why didn’t you give it to me?”
Sophie flinched. “Because Emily made me promise not to.”
“You knew I was grieving. You knew I could barely function.”
“I know.”
“Then what could possibly make her want you to wait?”
“Why didn’t you give it to me?”
Sophie looked down at her hands.
“She said, ‘Not at the funeral. Not right after. Don’t give it to Mom when she’s drowning.'”
My breath caught.
“Then she said, ‘If she actually goes through with the wedding, give it to her before she gets married. She’ll need it then.'”
‘Don’t give it to Mom when she’s drowning.’
I looked at Emily’s picture in my bouquet.
A cold thought entered my mind.
“Did she not like Charles?”
Sophie blinked. “What?”
“She told you to come on my wedding day. She didn’t want Charles in the room. What was I supposed to think?”
A cold thought entered my mind.
Understanding crossed Sophie’s face.
“No. Emily liked Charles.”
“Then why couldn’t he be here?”
Sophie hesitated.
“She said you’d spent your whole life taking care of other people. And if Charles was standing beside you, you’d look at him before you decided what you wanted.”
Understanding crossed Sophie’s face.
I stared at her.
“Emily wanted you to hear this as her mother,” Sophie said. “Not as Charles’s fiancée. She said whatever you did afterward had to be your choice.”
Something tightened in my throat.
“What choice?”
Sophie picked up her bag.
“She said whatever you did afterward had to be your choice.”
“That’s what she wanted me to give you.”
She pulled out a small white box.
My hands started shaking before she even opened it.
Inside was a cream-colored envelope.
One word was written across the front.
Mom.
She pulled out a small white box.
I knew Emily’s handwriting.
She made the M too large. Always had. When she was little, she wrote her name with an enormous E because she thought capital letters were more important than the others.
I touched the envelope but couldn’t pick it up.
“When did she give this to you?”
I knew Emily’s handwriting.
“My last visit to the hospital.”
I looked at Sophie.
“She wrote this in the hospital?”
“She had one good afternoon. Her fever came down for a while, and she was awake. Really awake.”
I remembered that afternoon.
“My last visit to the hospital.”
I had gone home for two hours because Charles practically forced me to shower.
“You smell like a hospital,” he’d said gently. “Emily will bully both of us when she wakes up properly.”
I had left because I believed there would be more afternoons.
There weren’t.
Sophie sat beside me.
I believed there would be more afternoons.
“She asked me to bring her a few things from her apartment. Then she wrote the letter.”
“Did you read it?”
“No.”
I picked it up.
“I don’t think I can do this.” My voice quavered.
“You don’t have to…”
“Then she wrote the letter.”
I almost laughed.
“She knew I would.”
Sophie gave a small, broken smile.
“Yeah. She probably did.”
I opened the envelope.
The first line made me cry.
I opened the envelope.
Mom,
If Sophie is giving you this, you actually did it. You put on the dress.
I covered my mouth.
I could hear her voice before I read another word.
Mom, I know you. If things go badly for me, you’re going to blame yourself. You’ll blame yourself for not noticing sooner, for sleeping, for eating, probably for breathing.
And I know what you’ll do about the wedding.
I could hear her voice before I read another word.
You’ll tell yourself you’re not allowed to be happy.
My vision blurred.
You loved me every day of my life. You don’t have to prove it by being miserable for the rest of yours.
And don’t turn loving me into a sentence you have to serve.
I stopped reading.
My vision blurred.
For a year, people had told me Emily would want me to be happy.
Charles had said it. My sister had said it. A therapist had said it.
And every time, the same thought had risen inside me.
You don’t know.
But Emily had known.
I forced myself to read the final lines.
But Emily had known.
There’s something else I need you to hear, but I couldn’t put it in a letter.
Sophie has it.
Watch the video before you decide whether to walk down that aisle.