In my wildest dreams, I never imagined one of those non-attending guests would turn out to be my own mother.
Yet, when the phone rang in the middle of the night just days before our big day, it quickly became evident that this would not be the wedding I had planned. “Mom’s in the hospital.” It was my brother on the phone from California. “It looks like she’s had a stroke.”
And so began one of the more intense days of my life: trying to find out what was going on with my mom in a hospital emergency room on the other side of the country and finishing up final details for the wedding.
Final details? Go on with the wedding? Indeed. On a day when I didn’t know what was going medically with my mother, one thing was clear — her voice in my head. “Never postpone a joyous occasion,” she had drummed that one into me since I was a little girl. This show had to go on.
Within 24 hours we received encouraging news that it appeared my mother had suffered a TIA, or mini-temporary stroke instead of a full-blown stroke with devastating consequences. While her symptoms appeared to subside, it was very clear, there was no way she would be able to travel across the country and make it to the wedding.
How do you get over the disappointment and obstacle of your own mother missing your wedding?
Well, as the Joe Cocker/Beatles song goes, “With a little help from your friends.”
I had the idea of holding up a cellphone during our vows so at least my mother could hear her oldest daughter get married.
My friend, Parisa, did me one better. “You want me to Skype her into the wedding?” she asked me. To me, Parisa is my dear friend with a huge heart and the ability to cook up a feast of Persian food like you’ve never seen. I forget that in her daily life she’s the head of international news gathering at CNN. The woman brings live shots in from the middle of a battlefield in Afghanistan. Getting my mother to my wedding via Skype? A piece of cake.
So with the crisis in Libya unfolding and countless other hot spots bubbling around the world, Parisa made sure that my mother was my wedding … via Skype.
I will forever have the image, standing under the canopy next to my husband, surrounded by family and friends and there just to the right, was my mother beaming back on Parisa’s iPad.
Not to say it didn’t go off without a hitch. Right before the pastor was about to pronounce us husband and wife, we heard Parisa’s husband declare, “Excuse me! Can you do that part again? We’ve just lost the signal, and I know Daryn’s mom won’t want to miss the best part.”
So, yes, there was “Take 2.”
I’m happy to say, despite the obstacles we are now officially married, Mom is doing better, no doubt fueled on in her recovery by the joy that she didn’t miss a single second of her kid’s wedding.
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