I turned back toward the mirror.
Mom finished.
It was not getting the last fourteen buttons.
Then her hands settled on my shoulders.
“You look exactly how I always imagined.”
That nearly got me before the ceremony even started.
***
Dress shopping had always been ours.
When I was sixteen, Mom and I passed a bridal store at the mall and spent twenty minutes criticizing dresses we couldn’t afford.
Dress shopping had always been ours.
She’d pointed to a giant ball gown.
“That one.”
“I’d look like a cupcake, Mom.”
“A very expensive cupcake.”
From then on, we joked that when my turn came, she would help me find something that didn’t resemble dessert.
“I’d look like a cupcake, Mom.”
After her diagnosis, the joke stopped feeling quite so casual.
There were milestones I’d always assumed Mom would be there for.
Wedding dress.
Wedding.
Maybe babies someday.
Christmases I hadn’t thought about yet.
