Five minutes before I was supposed to marry Charles, my wedding coordinator pulled me aside.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour daughter is waiting near the back entrance. She wants to speak to you alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
I nearly dropped my bouquet.<\/p>\n
My only daughter, Emily, had died a year earlier.<\/p>\n
When I entered the small room, I found a young woman crying.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy name is Sophie,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
I froze.<\/p>\n
Emily had spoken about Sophie for years. They had been best friends in college, but I had never met her.<\/p>\n
Then Sophie handed me an envelope.<\/p>\n
\u201cEmily gave me this before she died. She made me promise to give it to you on your wedding day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inside was a letter in Emily\u2019s handwriting.<\/p>\n
She knew I would feel guilty for moving forward after losing her.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou loved me every day of my life,\u201d she had written. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to prove it by being miserable forever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then Sophie played a video Emily had recorded from the hospital.<\/p>\n
My daughter appeared on the screen smiling.<\/p>\n
\u201cMom, don\u2019t make your life smaller because mine was short.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then came the words that broke me.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Charles is still waiting and you still want him, go marry him. I\u2019ll still be your daughter tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Twenty minutes later, I returned to the ceremony.<\/p>\n
Charles quietly said, \u201cWe don\u2019t have to do this today.\u201d<\/p>\n
I took his hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know. But I want to.\u201d<\/p>\n
And with Emily\u2019s bracelet around my wrist, I walked down the aisle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Five minutes before I was supposed to marry Charles, my wedding coordinator pulled me aside. \u201cYour daughter is waiting near the back entrance. She wants to speak to you alone.\u201d I nearly dropped my bouquet. My only daughter, Emily, had died a year earlier. When I entered the small room, I found a young woman …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9638,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9637","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\/9637","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=9637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9639,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9637\/revisions\/9639"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}