The day of our son’s wedding, my pulse raced. My shirt was soaked with sweat and I grasped my wife’s hand to steady myself. While he was growing up, I hadn’t given this day much thought. I simply assumed that he would one day find his soulmate and that his personal life would bolster his professional success. 

That’s how it was for me. I’d been able to work hard, perhaps too hard, because I could count on stability in my own marriage. My family had provided sustenance to overcome daily challenges and the energy to tilt with windmills. My wife had quietly supported us through calm and troubled times. Today, Sean was clinching his most important decision, the relationship that would determine his resiliency and future happiness.

My mind buzzed with anxiety. During the two-year courtship of his wife-to-be, Sean’s mother and I had not come to know the bride well. Our encounters with her had been brief and perfunctory. I wondered, did Sean want it that way? Was he protecting her from us? Sean held his mother and me at a similar distance.

I wished they had delayed the wedding a little longer. Our younger son, Aaron, Sean’s only sibling, had died by his own hand just two years earlier. I had failed him. Why couldn’t I help him find a meaningful path? No matter where I went, what else I might do, there would always be an Aaron-shaped hole in my life. Now our only other child was moving on.

While two years might seem like enough time to grieve, I was not done.

Since Aaron’s death, Sean had become distant, brushing off our invitations for family events and holidays. Less communicative. Less willing to discuss things that mattered. This was a dynamic foreign to me, alien to our family. As Sean’s eyes scanned the guests at the reception, he avoided my gaze. When he embraced friends and their significant others with enthusiasm and warmth, I felt abandoned. I had an unspoken hope that today might be one of coming together with a fresh beginning for our relationship.  My wife also tried to catch Sean’s attention, but she was unable to do so.

Sean was grieved and angry over his brother’s death. So was I. I blamed myself. I wondered, did Sean blame me, too?

I wanted to scream, “What do you think I wanted for Aaron? For you?” If only I had understood Aaron’s problems better. If only I had been wiser. 

Aaron’s death had  slammed the door on that relationship. But for Sean and us, there was still time, still hope. I just didn’t know if he was willing.

Every day, Aaron haunted my hours, forcing me to relive moments when I might have acted differently, when the outcome might have changed. The times I got angry during his music lessons because I thought he lost focus. The time I pushed him to attend a summer science program when he wanted to relax at home with friends. The time I pressured him to run track at school. Looking back,  I just wanted him to realize his potential and be proud of his accomplishments. I wished now I had been a better listener and more sensitive to his needs. These thoughts tortured me, the images recurring faster, then slower, magnified many-fold, then shrinking to black holes in my mind.

Although spirits ran high in the room in anticipation of the ceremony, I was a pariah. Surely everybody here knew my story. Surely everyone was judging me. An inner voice called me out: You didn’t nurture Aaron. Now he’s gone. A father’s most important duty is to protect his children. You deserve to lose your other son.

I sensed guests moving away from me, as if repelled by my darkness.

I had suffered episodes of irregular heartbeat for five years. No medical cause for my arrhythmia could be identified. A physician by training, I was attuned to worrying about the complications of this condition. I had not suffered a bout of aberrant beats in many weeks and hoped it would not intrude on this weekend. I had accidentally left my medication in our hotel room, but my heart was still under control. No reason for alarm.

Following dinner, the guests toasted the bride and groom with love and admiration. There were stories about our son’s generosity toward his friends in their professional and personal lives: writing recommendations, transporting ailing relatives to family gatherings, babysitting for young couples who needed a night out. Most of these stories were new to my wife and me. Most had happened in the last two years. Sean had kept this part of his life from us. We were so proud of him, so happy to watch him grow into a caring adult. Caring for everyone except us. Why were we abandoned? I read disappointment in my wife’s eyes too.

Wasn’t there a place in his heart for forgiveness? I believed that was how families support each other. I had been so close to him for so many years, and his mother was with me every step of the way. We didn’t understand. 

During the wedding toasts, my wife spoke first from our family. A sensitive and caring woman, she was trying to steady us as a family while each of us dealt with Aaron’s loss. She had created a quilt embellished with unique buttons, each representing one of the guests, and accompanied by a collection of their memories and wishes for the married couple. There was an audible gasp when the audience saw the finished quilt and appreciated its meaning. The new couple accepted the gift formally. My wife tried to engage our son with a smile and a hug, but I read little warmth in his reciprocal embrace. I could see a profound sadness darkening her eyes and drawing her lips together tightly before she sat down quietly.

After his mother spoke, Sean moved to the microphone. He honored his guests through an impromptu string of anecdotes delivered with sincerity and good cheer.

It was hard for me to see him as a bridegroom. Instead, I remembered the little boy whose hand I held while we lay awake all night in the intensive care unit after his surgery, the son I taught to sail and swim, the young man I nourished with my whole being as a clarinetist, the child whose curiosity I stimulated in the world of scientific inquiry. My co-adventurer in so many ways. He gave me courage as I witnessed his fearlessness in the face of challenges.

Some uglier memories nagged at me too. Rebuking him for being bossy on family vacations, calling him fat in middle school and prodding him to do more athletics, criticizing his clarinet performance right before the high school prom. Constructive criticism, I thought then. Encouragement to do better. Now, I cringed in shame. 

My mind flew to Aaron, as it so often did. A wonderful raconteur, he would have led toasts at this reception. His unique sparkle would have had everyone in the room laughing, then crying. Almost to his last day, Aaron had a sixth sense, tapping into the psyche of others. Then he was gone.

Though Sean had not mentioned him by name, his spirit was very much present. I could feel him. Perhaps everyone could. Several of Aaron’s friends were in attendance. I had hoped there would be an empty chair reserved for him next to his brother. It would have been a seat of loss and honor, remembrance and hope. That was what I wanted. An acknowledgment that Aaron was always with me, with all of us. I didn’t know what Sean and his bride wanted.

The bride was an enigma. She had started dating our son shortly before his brother passed. Our first meeting with her was heart-wrenching. We’d flown to Aaron’s school to inform his friends of his passing. Sean had known all his brother’s closest friends, and, with great compassion, he delivered the news to each person, holding and hugging, crying together. As each one left, he would turn to his new girlfriend. She held him until he could continue. She infused him with strength that day. We looked on in gratitude and not a little jealousy as her touch soothed him in a way we could not. The relationship between them created a parallel, but separate, universe from ours.

The bride would in many ways guide the future relationship with our son and grandchildren. My wife and I struggled to read her. We sought a place in her heart but had yet to find it. I suspected Sean was pulling in the opposite direction as he began a life with her that did not include his parents. Maybe she was simply giving in to his wishes.

When it was her time to address the group, she spoke with ease and brevity.

“I can see my future role—follow my husband’s lead.” Her words were delivered with lightness, and she sat down to enthusiastic applause. She was an accomplished woman herself, a Teach for America volunteer who had parlayed that experience into a public-school teaching career.

While everyone else laughed, I was puzzled by her words. Irony was never my strong suit, and I worried, perhaps too much, about what was behind her remarks.

The pace and volume of the country club reception’s music increased as couples took to the dance floor. I felt old and out of place. Not what I imagined at our son’s wedding. The aura of his warmth had drawn a circle of exclusion around his mother and me. I looked beyond the neutral expression on my wife’s face, discerning deepening lines of disappointment and longing.

My collar felt tight, and I fought to catch my breath as pressure crushed my chest. Although wine and good cheer were flowing freely in the room, my blood felt thick and sludgy.

My heartbeat lapsed into an irregular cadence, a rhythm yet-to-be-invented. The beats accelerated rapidly, then randomly dropped out. My vision began to swim. I told my wife something was wrong. She studied me carefully, at first suspicious that I simply wanted to leave. When her clammy fingers felt my pulse, I understood that we were both experiencing the stress of the day.

She agreed that it was time to go. We said goodbye to our son and daughter-in-law. Formal hugs were exchanged. No opportunity for a more personal parting, even for his mother. The young couple was embarking on a thrilling new adventure. We wanted to be part of that adventure, as previous generations of our family had always been, supporting and protecting, loving and being loved.

My brain advised, ‘Give it a chance,’ but my heart weighed in with its wild dance, ‘It will never happen.’ I faced my mortality without the support of the son I loved so much. Sean had our blood running through his veins, but he preferred to be with strangers. I wanted to take him aside and urge, “Let’s behave like the family we need to be.”

Instead, with my wife’s hand firmly grasped in mine, we walked slowly away from the party. Two figures intertwined, carrying a burden we hoped we could bear.