The Peaceful Day Before

May 24—Saturday
I got up early and decided to finish the last DVD so it would be out of the way. While my aunt sat at one end of the table on her laptop, I sat next to her completing it. It was my last big worry. Now, a word about the DVDs. I keep mentioning them and it might be confusing so let me break it down. I made the following DVDs
**One for the Memorial which would be shown at the beginning of the wedding ceremony.
**One for our parents which was a gift to them from us and was shown at the rehearsal dinner.
** One for our friends/wedding party which was a gift to them from us and was shown at the rehearsal dinner.
**One of Joey and I growing up which was to be shown at the wedding reception, just before we danced. This was the one I put the most work into.

I finished the IMovie up but I needed to burn it to disk. Looking through my computer stuff, I realized I didn’t have the DVD burner. Grrrrrr. I must have left it at Joey’s which meant I had to go over there after RivRunners. Oh well. I knew he was golfing with Ben and Nick so I wasn’t going to run into him.

I left my mom’s house and headed to Riverview for RivRunners. It was 8:50ish. I remember thinking how blue the sky was and I was so smiley. The RivRunners gathered near our start line in the parking lot. I was laying on the pavement stretching and jumped up to walk toward Jamie Lenon. No sooner had I done that and a bird flew over and dropped some poo exactly where I had just been. We all laughed at my fortune. Hopefully, the rest of my day would be like this—bird poo free. Mike prayed and we ran. I ran with Tera, a new girl. She pushed me to run hard and I did a fairly good job of keeping up. Afterwards, Todd tried to get everyone to go out to breakfast but I needed to go to Joey’s. On my way there, I thought about what I needed to finish up before the wedding:
Eyebrows waxed
Gift for Joey
DVD!!!! I would have time later to burn it.

When I got to Joey’s, I couldn’t find the burner anywhere. I asked Junior and he didn’t seem to know. He called Joey and asked him. Joey said the burner was in his trunk. Crap. We arranged for me to pick it up later somehow. I decided to just take a shower there and then run some errands before my appointment with my mom at 11:00. While I was in the shower, I thought back to the rehearsal and how much I didn’t like the way the bridesmaids and groomsmen were standing. As you can tell, my mind was going 100 miles a minute. I got in the car and left.

For those of you who didn’t know this (the few readers who actually view this blog know it but I’m just going to explain anyhow), there was another Riv wedding that day at a golf course somewhere. Noel was to perform half the ceremony and Devon was in the wedding. A lot of our friends were attending that wedding, too (Jim Lenon was the bartender). As I neared Cedar Street heading east on Willoughby near Kroger (details, details), I decided to just call Devon. I prayed I would get Devon’s voicemail because I didn’t want to bother her with this trite request. But I didn’t. Thank you, Lord, I didn’t.

Justin (Devon’s husband) answered the phone. He explained Devon was just getting out of the shower but to hold on. I was in the left turn lane, blinker on, waiting for the light to turn green so I could head north on Cedar street.

“Holly,” Devon said, “how are you doing?”
“I’m fine but I just wanted to ask you a question.”
“Okay,” she said, “did someone call you this morning?”
My heart began to pound. Oh know. Something’s wrong. I could just sense it. I started making the turn onto Cedar.
“No…why?”
“Oh, Holly….I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you this…”
So many things went through my head. I thought something had happened to Noel or Dan. Maybe the church burned down or they lost the music for my wedding. No, I was just at the church. It was fine. What then? What--
“Holly…Susan Haist passed away this morning.”