An Emotional Hangover

So this past weekend was wedding weekend. My son's. And his beautiful bride. A magical couple but more. A mindful pairing. A heartfelt union. A deep love and even deeper respect. A truly joyful connection between two free yet still grounded spirits. I could not ask for anything more deserving for my beautiful son than for him to merge his heart and soul with this extraordinary woman. We are all very blessed.

And so it was that we - the two of them and the moms and dads, and sisters and brothers, grandparents and cousins, and aunts, uncles, families, friends, loved ones and chosen ones  - rode this ride of emotion leading up to the wedding. And now it is the day after. Actually the day after the day after, but still, it is after the high of such an amazing event and I am sitting in this place of not quite knowing. Yet again.

I was here before. Last week actually. And the few weeks before that. Of not quite knowing what it was that I was feeling about the fact that my son was getting married.  I wrote about this just last week. The letting it unfold. The not trying to figure out exactly how I feel but instead just letting myself grow into the emotions of this moment when my son creates his own family with the merging of his life into another.

And here I am again. In the same place of not quite knowing. A sad place in some ways. A drop after the high. Where the buzz of adrenaline is replace with scattered memories. 

For that is what they are for me.

I can't quite place myself. At this wedding of love and light. When I woke up this morning - and the tears came quickly without my expecting them - I wondered how it could all not be there. Every moment. Because parts of the wedding are gone. Or happened so fast and so only pieces of the whole are embedded in me. 

And not just the wedding. The day leading up to it. And the night before that, at a rehearsal and dinner where deep love and laughter were shared through stories and toasts as we ate good food and connected two families. Parts of that are gone, too. 

I spoke to my son on the phone today. And he said it so well. He said we were so conscious of being mindful and in the moment that it feels like we were not mindful and in the moment at all. Or something like that...

And I am thinking that this is how it works. That when we settle deep into just being in what unfolds before us, rather than thinking about what unfolds before us, our brain perhaps doesn't store the information in the same way. We are not processing and forming opinions about what is happening.

We are not creating a story. 

And as I am writing this, in the moment of it as my words and thoughts flow freely onto this page, I can see that is really quite lovely. Being so in the moment of something that it is truly pure in its happening and so the experience of it is 100% exactly what it is. It is just it. 

I like this. The It is just it. But it is hard for me, too. Because I want more. I want all the details. Truly, I want to relive it again. But a bit differently, so the memories I have are joined by new ones. And then more after that. I want to go through this wedding like ten times. Present and in the moment of it each time but ten times of that. So that I can then have a complete picture of it all. 

I want to sit in a dozen different places during the ceremony so that I can take in every angle. I want to speak to every person I talked to and every person I didn't. I want to taste the food again, but in a different order. And eat more cake. I want to dance more but I also want to sit back and watch the dancing more, too.

And I want to stand to the side and just watch my son and new daughter move through this magical night.