Chap­ter 8 begins as the days lead­ing up to the wed­ding seem to pass in a blur. Mag­gie and the Gard­ners were han­dling most of the wed­ding prepa­ra­tions, but I still found myself with plen­ty of tasks to man­age. One after­noon, I rum­maged through the attic, hop­ing to find some­thing use­ful. It was there I stum­bled upon my old tuxe­do, the same one I had worn on my wed­ding day twen­ty-eight years ago. Although it no longer fit, I could­n’t help but feel a sense of nos­tal­gia as I sift­ed through the pock­ets. In one of them, I found a cock­tail nap­kin stained with my late wife Colleen’s lip­stick, a small memen­to that I decid­ed to keep for good luck. Hold­ing that nap­kin in my hand, I couldn’t help but reflect on the pas­sage of time, and the mem­o­ries that still lin­gered.

As the wed­ding approached, I made the deci­sion to rent a light-gray sum­mer tuxe­do from Men’s Wear­house, com­plete with a match­ing vest and bow tie. The sales­man who assist­ed me was a young man with pink hair and pierc­ings, eager to make the sale. He suc­cess­ful­ly con­vinced me to pur­chase a nine-piece acces­so­ry pack­age, which includ­ed shoes and cuf­flinks. I found myself smil­ing at the enthu­si­asm he brought to the expe­ri­ence, a stark con­trast to my own more reserved nature. While I wasn’t ini­tial­ly plan­ning to buy acces­sories, his excite­ment was con­ta­gious, and by the end of the trans­ac­tion, I felt odd­ly pos­i­tive about the pur­chase. The whole process left me with a sense of good­will, espe­cial­ly as I thought about Maggie’s upcom­ing wed­ding and the joy it would bring to our fam­i­ly. I felt a deep sense of pride as I pre­pared for this spe­cial day, even though it was a whirl­wind of last-minute arrange­ments.

One of my main tasks was to pre­pare a toast for the wed­ding recep­tion, which was eas­i­er said than done. Bridal web­sites rec­om­mend that wed­ding toasts should be around nine­ty sec­onds long, encour­ag­ing speak­ers to speak from the heart. How­ev­er, as I sat down to write, I quick­ly real­ized I had an over­whelm­ing num­ber of thoughts and emo­tions to con­vey. What was sup­posed to be a brief, heart­felt mes­sage turned into eigh­teen pages of notes, far more than what was nec­es­sary for the allot­ted time. Each writ­ing ses­sion only seemed to increase the length of my notes as I strug­gled to con­dense my feel­ings into a short, mean­ing­ful speech. The pres­sure of hav­ing to sum up a life­time of love and pride in just a few moments weighed heav­i­ly on me, and I found myself repeat­ed­ly edit­ing, know­ing that the time was fast approach­ing. The task became more daunt­ing as the wed­ding day neared, yet I couldn’t help but feel an under­ly­ing sense of excite­ment about stand­ing up and speak­ing from the heart.

In addi­tion to prepar­ing the toast, I want­ed to spend some time with Aidan, my future son-in-law, and strength­en our rela­tion­ship. I sug­gest­ed we attend a Red Sox game togeth­er, think­ing it would be a great bond­ing expe­ri­ence. How­ev­er, Mag­gie informed me that Aidan wasn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly fond of sports, which caught me off guard, as I had assumed we would share this inter­est. I then sug­gest­ed we vis­it the Boston Muse­um of Fine Arts, where Aidan could show me his favorite exhibits, but despite both of us hav­ing shared inter­ests, we strug­gled to find a date that worked for us. Each time we tried to plan, Aidan made excus­es, and after sev­er­al attempts, I began to sense that he wasn’t as eager to spend time togeth­er as I had hoped. Rather than feel­ing reject­ed, I chose not to take it per­son­al­ly, under­stand­ing that he like­ly already had a strong rela­tion­ship with his own father, and per­haps didn’t see the need to forge anoth­er con­nec­tion.

Mag­gie, too, seemed dis­tant dur­ing this time, which was dis­ap­point­ing to me. Despite our recent efforts to recon­nect, I found that her busy sched­ule, filled with wed­ding plan­ning and work, left lit­tle room for mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tions. Our dis­cus­sions were often short, and I could sense her pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with oth­er respon­si­bil­i­ties. How­ev­er, Mag­gie reas­sured me that once we arrived at Osprey Cove for the wed­ding, we would have more time for each oth­er. She even promised we could relive our past camp­ing trips, like canoe­ing togeth­er, some­thing I looked for­ward to. As July passed by, I found myself eager­ly antic­i­pat­ing the reunion, while vow­ing to give Mag­gie the space she need­ed until the big day arrived. The antic­i­pa­tion for the wed­ding con­tin­ued to grow, but so did the desire for deep­er con­nec­tions that seemed to be slip­ping away as the stress of the event loomed.