This past Memorial Day I watched as one of my best friends got married. It was quite the drama filled day. While I won't go into every single detail, I will say the bride's sister/matron of honor dropped out because the night before she had an epiphany of some sorts and told the bride she should not marry the groom. What played out in that next 24 hours would tear the family in to two. Fights between sisters, between daughters and their father and the soon to be father in law and the groom. It seemed as though no one was remembering what the weekend was about, or whom.
There was, as typically is in most weddings plenty of tears. Though the guests had not one clue it was more for the loss of a sister, a friend rather than the fact the bride was getting married. In the end, the bride's sister backed out of the wedding, vowing that until the bride ends the relationship with the groom, and until they move out of their parents house, until these things happen their relationship was dead.
Through it all, I stood along with the two other bridesmaids beside the bride. We picked up where the Matron left off. In that instance we all became the family she had just lost. At the moment, in the final moments of the bridal room, I felt this extreme amount of sorrow for her. For her family. For everything and everyone involved. And even if I had been married for five years, I knew there was no amount of advice that I could really truly give her that would make anything better.
So I did the only thing I could think of, along with my husband who was a groomsman, we vowed that we would be there for her. For them.Whether it was that day, or three years from now. Because as friends, as family that's what we do.
It's been two weeks since that frightful hot May day, and in those two weeks my husband and I are beginning to wonder if making that vow was the right decision. In the two weeks we have become mediators between bride and groom, someone to vent to via text, email and lengthy phone conversations. We invited the groom over this past weekend while the bride took up a babysitting job. But we weren't expecting that we would end up taking him out and paying for his meal, since he is unemployed at the moment. We truly didn't mind this, after all it was our suggestion to take him to dinner with us. But as we talked at the table, he kept bringing up the fact that we needed to get together, hang out more often.
During the visit he asked if it would be ok if they could use our place to crash when they need to escape from his in-laws house, and asked to chauffeur them to the airport for a 6 o'clock flight on a Tuesday morning for their honeymoon, they would need to leave their car here for the week and be picked back up that following Tuesday at midnight.
Neither my husband nor I knew what to say. On one hand we didn't exactly mind hanging out with them, being there for them we were beginning to wonder how much is to much? And when does it begin to cross the line from friendship to being used completely?
And should this be the case, how does one stop it from continuing?
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