Five months after losing my daughter Emily to cancer, her boyfriend arrived at her sister\u2019s wedding wearing a lavender bridesmaid dress.<\/p>\n
My husband was furious.<\/p>\n
\u201cDaniel, what are you doing? Leave!\u201d<\/p>\n
But Daniel stood holding a bouquet, his hands shaking.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease. I promised Emily.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emily was 28 when she died. She and Sophie were inseparable, and she’d helped plan the wedding before getting sick. She\u2019d even picked the lavender dresses.<\/p>\n
Daniel reached into his bouquet and pulled out an envelope. I recognized Emily\u2019s handwriting.<\/p>\n
He turned to Sophie.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour sister knew she wouldn\u2019t be here. She made me promise to take her place as maid of honor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guests laughed nervously.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe picked the dress herself,\u201d he continued. \u201cShe said you\u2019d be so busy missing her that someone needed to make you laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sophie opened the letter, crying.<\/p>\n
Then she suddenly laughed.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe says you look like a lavender curtain!\u201d<\/p>\n
Daniel laughed too.<\/p>\n
But the next line silenced everyone.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re happy today, Sophie, don\u2019t feel guilty. Every laugh is proof we had something wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sophie hugged Daniel tightly. My husband apologized and embraced him too.<\/p>\n
Daniel stood beside Sophie throughout the ceremony, lavender bouquet in hand.<\/p>\n
And when he gave her an awkward curtsy at the altar, Sophie laughed like she hadn\u2019t in months.<\/p>\n
For a moment, so did we.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Five months after losing my daughter Emily to cancer, her boyfriend arrived at her sister\u2019s wedding wearing a lavender bridesmaid dress. My husband was furious. \u201cDaniel, what are you doing? Leave!\u201d But Daniel stood holding a bouquet, his hands shaking. \u201cPlease. I promised Emily.\u201d Emily was 28 when she died. She and Sophie were inseparable, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10803"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10805,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10803\/revisions\/10805"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}