On Weddings After Funerals

In which I reluctantly provide advice

One of the occupational hazards and true privileges of being a man who is mostly employed by telling sad stories on the internet is that, on occasion, someone out in the lonely world may be going through something kind of rough, and they may also be under the impression that because of what I do for a living, I may be able to help.

And they may write me a kind message peppered with compliments and flattery which might have the intoxicating effect of convincing me for a small window of time that I am actually capable of helping.

Though truthfully my expertise really only extends to a small handful of things which I would not characterize as remotely helpful, most of which have to do with jiu jitsu and hardcore music from the late 90s.

The embarrassing truth of course, is that the only thing I am actually an expert in (the only thing any of us are experts in, really) is my own experience, and therefore when someone reaches out, instead of advice or wisdom, I believe the best I can offer them is usually a story.

A story is not useful in a prescriptive sense.

A story will not tell you what to do, I assume that chat GPT is far more suited at creating some kind of neat checklist for most of our crises.

But what a story does that is useful is that it lets us know that we are not alone and I find that, while not being alone does not solve the problem, it certainly takes away a lot of the power that the problem had over us in the first place.

The other day a young man reached out to me with one such problem and I thought that it might make all of us feel less alone if I shared my response:

Ian wrote:

My dad died this time last year. Two days ago I graduated college, and decided I wasn’t going to walk. I was scared to walk because my dad wouldn’t be there, and that’s not right. Two hours before the ceremony, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he would be mad at me if I didn’t walk, so I hurriedly bought a cap and gown, and walked without him there.

Next month, I get married. And he won’t be there. And I’m beyond excited to get married…but I find myself more afraid than anything.

How is dad not there?

I don’t want to be distracted in my heart by the absence of my father while I’m at my own wedding, but I’m even more afraid of not being so. I don’t know what to do and I’m scared, and I just want my dad.

My Response:

Dear Ian,

I first want to congratulate you on your graduation and on your upcoming nuptials, and I want to commend you for a tremendous act of courage that is simply reaching out to a stranger for help.

It is truly an honor to be of service to you and I will do my best not to fuck it up.

As you may know, I got married about seven months after my mom died unexpectedly from a brief but brutal fight with lung cancer. Four days after she passed away I lost my job, and the months that followed were some of the most challenging of my life.

I say this not to compare tragedies, rather to provide important context for what I will tell you next:

Which is that my wedding day was one of the greatest days of my life.

It was also a sad day. Of course it was.

But the thing is, those days, every day was a sad day.

In fact, there is a little sadness every day, to this day.

But one thing that I have learned is that the presence of sadness does not remove the possibility for joy.

The sadness you now hold is a little like knowing the spoilers to a movie - you can let the spoilers ruin the film for you, or you can appreciate how the plot bends to create them even though you already know they are going to happen.

On my wedding day, before the mother son dance - I walked out onto the tiny dance floor in the English pub that my mom was so excited to join me on. It was a small wedding, about 50 people, just enough to be able to look everyone in the eyes when I talked to them - there was nowhere to hide.

This is how it feels to be the elephant in the room.

I realized that they were looking to me for a sign as to how they were supposed to act in this moment. How they were supposed to celebrate in the presence of absence.

It was heavy.

So I smiled and I told them that before my mom passed, when she was in the hospital I would email her songs that I thought would make her feel better, and there was one lyric that stood out for both of us and felt appropriate to share in this moment:

“Tell the people that you love that you love them,

Make music like nobody will hear it,

And if you’re ever at a wedding and the dance floor is empty dance hard motherfucker be fearless”

Which would’ve been profound, but I didn’t say that.

I fumbled over the first line two and said “make love like nobody will hear it,” which is an objectively hilarious thing to say in front of your 90 year old grandmother.

Everyone laughed, and I laughed.

And I said, “my mom would dance her ass off if she was here tonight, so lets make her fucking proud,” and that is exactly what we did.

The presence of sadness did not remove the possibility of joy.

Grief is never not with us. There are days when it is louder than others, and days when we can’t do shit about the volume at all. So we can choose to let it prevent us from experiencing anything else, or we can choose to experience everything else alongside it.

Good luck,

Blake