No Reply: Hope

How do you respond to that? My whole life was turning into smoking ruins or at least it felt that way. I wanted to tell her everything was going to be okay, but I was having trouble believing that myself. Someone had to take the first step. Someone had to have enough faith in the future to take a stand ahead of where their heart was dug in. Is that what the men of my extended family asked me to do? To take the leap they desperately wanted to make but didn't know how, on their own, to do?

"Debbie, I forgive you." God, that was hard to say. Maybe at some level I meant it, but I certainly didn't feel it. "Whatever happened isn't worth what's happening to us. All I know is that I want it all to stop. I think maybe you women feel you suffered enough too. I do know the men are barely hanging on. Like I said, some of them might be ready to walk." That still left us nowhere.

We went back and forth, trying to find something everyone could agree on, something that would draw a line and let people move on. Debbie was looking down at her feet, digging a toe in the dirt, when she looked up, smiling. "I know what we can do. We're all gonna go back to what we should have had if this stupid tradition had never existed." I looked at my wife like she was crazy.

"We can't get remarried because none of us is divorced yet, Debbie."

"Yes, Bill, that's true but people can get up and say their vows again to each other and, in their hearts, give each other a new start. We can do anything we want to heal ourselves. If we can't forgive ourselves and each other, what's the point?

"Think about it, Bill. What everybody wants is to go back to how things were before all this embarrassment and hurt happened. We all forgive each other. Then we grab hold of our marriage vows and try to live up to them, but with a clean slate and a fresh start."

That's what we did. We all knew it was a gimmick, but no one had a better idea. We made some calls and found a minister who would come right away. He helped us write some words and then we all stood out back as George and Patsy Mason re-said their vows and forgave each other with a kiss. No one was dressed up; we were wearing the clothes of the day. No one's hair was done, and most men needed a shave. One couple after another stepped up. The repetition of what we were saying made it feel more solemn than any church service I ever went to. Even as that was happening, as wicked as she had been, Mom was moving through the crowd to apologize for her part in it all. My Dad and Mom were the last couple to step up and start fresh.

It would have been a hard day if we had let the tradition go on. If it had been just Debbie and me fixing things between us, nothing would have been really answered and that would have been its own kind of failure. What about all the others? All those men (and women) who were hurting too. It had to be that all of us were set free because it couldn't stay the way things had been. At the end, after the hurt, we all needed help and to help each other. We pulled through together as family, and that's the tradition we keep now.