He Chose Her

Continued from Charlie and Florence, Mildred and Spider, and Brothers at Last.

And in the end, he chose her.

In September of 1973, they wed.  Cathy was 25.  Ed was 22.  She wore a cathedral length mantilla veil.  Florence wore a rose pink dress.  Evie sang a solo.  Cathy’s sister was her Matron of Honor – she herself had met a man and hurried up and married him just a few weeks prior, to Cathy’s everlasting consternation.  Cathy was oldest.  Cathy should have been first.  She knew that Beth just did it to get attention.  (As it would turn out, Cathy would have the last laugh in the marriage department, the kind of last laugh that you wish you didn’t have when it’s your little sister’s happiness that you’re competing with.) 

Nobody knew what was coming to them on this happy day, which is what makes all weddings seem so joyful and innocent, when you look back over the pictures.    These two little families, these two sets of stories from the same small neighborhood in the same big town in the same huge country in the same tiny world . . . they came together with a small party of friends and watched the couple exchange vows in a large, ornate downtown church, waved them off into the limousine, and welcomed them to the small basement fellowship hall a few blocks away, where the reception was held.  They were toasted and roasted and cheered, then waved off into the night.  They began a life together in a tiny apartment in Pittsburgh, poor, struggling, as most young couples are.  Cathy worked as a secretary.  Ed began a Great Career Search that would take him to San Francisco and back, before he settled on his lifelong career.

Mid and Spider were happy enough with the union, though Mid would always remain mildly suspicious of the woman who had claimed her son’s heart.  Florence, on the other hand, was ecstatic that she’d snagged this wonderful man and made him a part of her family.  At 50, she had married off her two daughters.  And she could not have known for sure, though at this point she may have suspected, that Cathy’s happy day would be the last of her children’s weddings that she would attend.