embarrassing?”
“Of course.”
“Ridiculous, isn’t it? Seventy years old and still thinking about a white dress.”
“I always wanted to be a bride.”
I lowered the book.
She gave a little laugh.
“Ridiculous, isn’t it? Seventy years old and still thinking about a white dress.”
“It’s not ridiculous.”
“I don’t mean the marriage part anymore. I mean the moment.”
“The dress. The ring. Someone standing there and choosing you.”
“What moment?”
“The dress. The ring. Someone standing there and choosing you.”
She looked down at her hands.
“I never got that.”
Something about the way she said it stayed with me.
“Are you proposing to a patient?”
A few days later, I asked the hospice chaplain if there were rules against a symbolic wedding ceremony.
He stared at me.
“Are you proposing to a patient?”
“Symbolically.”
“That did not answer my question.”
Then a nurse helped me find a simple
