Donna’s Wedding Day

While we were growing up our grandmother (on our mother’s side) always included hankies with the gifts she gave us. These weren’t plain white hankies, but dainty ones with pretty embroidered designs. A few days before Donna was to be married, she set a few things out on her bureau that she would carry in her bride’s purse. Among these items was one of the hankies our grandmother had given her. Our grandmother had passed away two years earlier and Donna was sad because she wouldn’t be there to see her get married. The hankie was Donna’s way of including our grandmother on her special day.

The night before the wedding my sisters and I and a friend all spent the night at Donna’s apartment. Donna took us to her room to show us her gown and everything else that she would wear or carry with her the next day. She told us about carrying the hankie our grandmother had given her and when she turned to the bureau to show it to us, it wasn’t there. She had seen it there earlier in the day and was certain she hadn’t moved it. Everything else that she had set out with the hankie was still in place. Donna’s room, as well as her bureau, was exceptionally tidy so it would be easy to see if the hankie had somehow been knocked off the bureau and onto the floor. We searched all around the bureau, on the floor, and underneath it. We did a thorough search of all the drawers, which were as neat and tidy as the rest of the room, but we couldn’t find the hankie. Donna had other hankies that my grandmother had given her and said that even though she wanted to carry that one in particular, if we couldn’t find it she would choose another.

The missing hankie made Donna think of our grandmother all the more and that night and when she went to bed, Donna told our grandmother that if she was there to please let her know. The next morning when we were getting ready Donna called all of us into the room and there in the top drawer of her bureau, lying of top of everything else was the missing hankie. It was in plain sight and had it been there the night before, we would have found it when we looked through all the drawers. Whoever placed the hankie there knew that Donna had to go into that particular drawer because it contained certain items that she was to wear that day. To all of us it seemed as if our grandmother was letting us know that she was there to share Donna’s special day.

One other thing that was memorable about Donna’s wedding day was that it was cool and overcast. At some point after we had made it to the church, it had started to rain hard. But for a brief period during the ceremony, the sun came out and shone through the window into the church. I truly believe that Granny (our grandmother) had made it to Donna’s wedding after all.