Earlier this evening two of my oldest friends were married.
Jacob & Danielle (pictured are the bride, & the best man, Jen... yeah, it's California, make something of it, bitch).
I will spare you the standard bullshit. Yeah, it was all lovely, and clearly very expesive. The bride was beautiful, the groom was a lunatic, and they are always those things. Yeah, I saw people I hadn't seen in years, and that brought up the well worn rainbow of emotions & memories.
Yeah, yeah yeah.
The sticking point, for this very tired, 2:30 am moment, was the last person I spoke to before I left.
I was just saying my final goodbye to Jacob, then turned to the couple nearest him & said, in my goofy, nervous way, "Well, I can't say it was nice meeting you, as we never met, but..."
& before I could finish, the woman said, "Hi, I'm Sylvia, Gwen Araujo's mom."
Holy shit. My body became a mass of nettles. I was instantly forced to hold back a wall of tears, which had been building for more than three years, when the first reports of Gwen's murder began running on the news, & every night I sat in front of the television, terrified, shaking.
We talked for a while, and she aplogized for upsetting me. She thought I'd been looking at her & approaching her because I knew who she was. I told her that apologizing to me for anything was at the bottom of her list of things she ever needed to do.
I never quite got out what I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell her about the devastation & loss I felt at Gwen's death. Why the fuck tell her that. My sense of devastation? My sense of loss. Fuck that. This was her child, though I know now that the support she's received from around the world has had an enormous impact upon her.
She mentioned the Lifetime movie coming up, and I told her I'd just seen the ad yesterday, while watching... oh I hate to admit this... The Golden Girls. "How does it look? I don't have cable."
"Eh, it looks like a Lifetime Movie."
"Yeah, it's a DocuDrama. Some fact, some fiction. I went up to Vancouver, and met the cast. They're all really wonderful. They don't look like any of us though. Mercedes Ruehl doesn't look anything like me."
We went on to discuss how beautiful Gwen was, & how she always hated being told how much like her mom she looked. "I don't look like her," said Sylvia, imitating Gwen, "She's old, and I'm hot."
I assured Sylvia that she is a beautiful woman (which she most certainly is). I then told her that my ride was waiting for me outside, and I needed to run.
& I thanked her.
I can't explain what I was thanking her for. Her strength? Her understanding? Her patience? Her willingness to stand as a voice for something so huge, and so fragile?
I don't know, but I began hyperventilating in the elevator.
