Wedding Garter

I had to write this down, for me to remember later, for my girls. Today I was cleaning out my closet, trying to get stuff ready for the move. I came across a box of Joel's "special things". I have gone through this box once. It was his, so I did not thumb through it unless he wanted to show me something. In September I decided to put a scrap book together of these things for him. I flipped through the box, for the most part, but I never got all the way through it. I put the stuff away, worked on it a little bit, but never got it done. After Joel passed, I put it away in my closet, forgetting where I put it. I read one or two letters out of it, but never looking through all of it. I finally decided today to move the items from the shoe box to a storage container until I can the courage and strength to put it into a book for the girls. I dumped the contents into a storage container and on the bottom of the box, folded nicely and into a triangle was my garter belt from our wedding day. I did not know he had it, I did not know it was in there. I think I would have seen it poking through the first time I pawed through the box, but I did not. I guess I was not meant to. Seeing it today,.....hmmm....it was....so hard. I did not know he had kept it, I did not know he had taken it out of my wedding stuff(I had it with my gloves, handkerchief and veil). Maybe I was meant to see this, maybe I was meant to find it and know that he was thinking of me and our wedding day. Even if that is not the reason, I still thought of it, I thought of the DJ making Joel pull it off of my leg with his teeth. It was so funny, he was embarrassed, but I know he wanted to do it. I thought of finding it and knowing that Joel would like it, I thought of putting it on that day, over my "frilly" nylons and thinking, "damn this is irritating, it better be worth the hoots and hollars and looks from my husband". It was. Although this is a hard day today, like many others, there was still a silver lining, memories, good ones. Even though they make me sad, they are good ones and in the end, I do end up smiliing a little just thinking of him and the memories we made.