A few weeks ago, my wedding dress was delivered to me stuffed in a paper grocery bag.

A few weeks ago, my wedding dress was delivered to me stuffed in a paper grocery bag.

I made that dress myself. It’s lined with my son’s felted baby blankets and has my grandmother’s pearls sewn into it. It was really something, but I only wore it as long as the wedding itself.

It hung for 12 years in the back of what used to be the bedroom my husband and I slept in together.

It’s funny, I never thought I attached a lot of importance to weddings and wedding dresses. Big deal – the marriage is what’s important, everybody knows that. But I’m a flurry of crocodile tears now – because I worked too hard on that dress, too hard on that marriage, for it to end up like discarded like this.

So for the moment, I’m stuck in grief, wiping my tears on my son’s felt baby blankets and a bit unsure of why I’m crying.

We’re all much happier now, but receiving that dress was a finality that I wasn’t prepared for. I feel like, as long as it hung in a closet that the both of us used during our marriage, there was still a bond between us somehow, an acknowledgment that although it didn’t work out, it was still sacred, you know?

But I guess I don’t get to hold onto that sacredness either, it’s no longer part of who I am – is it?

Today, I hung my wrinkled wedding dress in the back of my new closet right next to the dress I wore the day I met my former husband.  I imagine those two dresses back there in the dark whispering to one another about possibilities totally unaware of the years that have passed on the other side of the closet door, and that makes me so so happy.

Hello from here, Melissa.