Brainstorming

Ideas - present divorced, reflecting on a past wedding

Characters: Lilian / Dawson

Reason why the marriage didn’t work: different priorities, she wanted a partner, he was too committed to his job.

Reason they’re seeing each other in present: funeral of a mutual friend.

The story:

Dawson had expected to see Lilian, of course. He knew how tight she and Kierra had been, but despite expecting her, he found his breath catching a little bit.

She was wearing the sweater he had bought her two Christmases ago. Was it intentional? She would have expected him to be here, after all. Had she forgotten where the sweater came from, he wondered.

Oh, it’s black. She doesn’t own a lot of black, and this is a funeral.

“Dawson,” Ryan said, interrupting the unhealthy spiral. “Thanks for coming, man.”

Dawson stood up to shake Ryan’s hand. “Of course. I’m so sorry. There just aren’t words for this sort of thing. Kierra was a special person.”

“Thanks,” Ryan replied. He didn’t have the words either. How would he? “I’m sorry to hear about you and Lilian.”

Dawson looked over at Lilian. Despite the somber occasion, she had a smile on her face, no doubt a reaction to a memory shared about Kierra. She stood with her arms linked with her friends, a whistful smile on her face as they shared memories of their friend. Her smile reminded Dawson of the smile she had worn on her face as she walked up the aisle just over a year ago. She had stepped on her father’s foot and was giggling about it. Dawson had sworn he would never forget that smile, and he hadn’t. But the memory was complex now.

“I’m sorry too, honestly” said Dylan in a rare moment of vulnerability. “She just doesn’t get what it’s like to be a lawyer though.” Dawson looked down, embarrassed. Ryan had just lost his partner in a much different, and worse, manner. He was the wrong person to be having this conversation with, especially today. “But that’s a conversation for another day. How are you holding up?”

“It’s rough without her. Honestly, I’m not sure it’s even set in yet.”

Dawson nodded, understandingly as Dylan drifted away to another person dutifully. Dawson wondered if it would be easier to lose someone to an accident than to divorce. He had read somewhere that divorce was actually tougher than death in the sense that it causes a person to question everything that came before.

Dawson’s job had been the source of conflict in their relationship. Lilian had always supported his endeavours though law school, and had been there with him when he was called to the bar, but the hours as a trainee solicitor were long, and Lilian had said that she was tired of feeling like she was single all the time.

I wonder if actually being single is any better, he thought bitterly. She was with friends, but there didn’t appear to be a love interest there. Perhaps a funeral wouldn’t make for a good date though, he really didn’t know what was going on with her.

Dawson glanced down at his watch. He wondered how long he would have to stay to be polite. People were making their way out of the chapel into a hall for refreshments (the “dead spread” Lilian had once called it, conspiratorially, at a funeral they had attended for her mom’s friend).

(To be continued…and yes, I’ll get to the wedding part of the prompt).