On a gorgeous summer day, Jeff and I were married on a pavilion overlooking a public beach. Cries of “Marco! Polo!” from families playing in the water punctuated our wedding vows. Afterwards, we posed for pictures with the ocean as our backdrop.
The perfect wedding for us beach lovers. Almost. Surrounded by our families and friends, there was one big presence missing. Jeff’s father, Gord. He should have been here, I thought. He would have loved this.
Jeff’s family spent every summer at their cottage on the beach in Huron County, Ontario, and Gord became a popular figure amongst the other cottagers.
Gregarious and easy-going, a stocky man with a mop of dark brown hair and a constant wry grin, he could be found most days out by the water, always holding a beer and clad in his swim trunks.
Gord loved the beach so much that two years ago, he convinced his wife and three kids to travel down to Florida in December for a beach-filled Christmas.
But towards the end of the trip, Gord had a massive heart attack. We all were devastated. Even now, two years later.
The wedding photographer urged us to smile for our photos, and we did, but it was difficult to be fully happy knowing that Gord wasn’t here to congratulate his oldest son, slow dance with his wife, officially welcome me to the family.
“He sees us,” my mother-in-law, Nancy said. “He’s just not with us.”
A month later, Jeff and I went to visit Nancy. “I want to show you a picture,” she told us, pulling up a photo on her computer.
“Gord looks good,” I said. Shot from a little far away, a bit blurry, but with that unmistakable stocky frame, dark mop of hair and swim trunks. “Was this from the Florida trip?”
Wordlessly, Nancy scrolled across the screen. The image of Gord was only in the background of a larger photo, and as she zoomed out, the rest of the picture came into view. Nancy, Gord’s mother, Jeff and I, in front of the public beach, smiling into the camera on our wedding day.
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