I watched her, she was still beautiful in her ice blue jacket and skirt. Her hair was long and silver and hung free about her head, in a sense a defiance of all of the young girls in the laced up green dresses. She was the mother of the groom and stood with her husband in her orbit. He was gentle-faced but horribly overweight. He could barely move as the square edges of the tux cut into his fleshy jowls and wrists. I wondered at it, how he could have snagged her as she floated in the room, greeting the guests. I do not know their story, their romance or what she is really beneath her ice blue dress. I created my own as I sat among the guests at the table. I wooed them with my happy artifice and they did not know any difference. Oh lovely, lovely, she and I may be sharing the same dark dance; a facade. Who knows; but last night I wanted her to be an ally. I could see my life clearly placed before me in her, and I shuddered at the banality of it. Her son the groom was flushed and happy with his gorgeous but slightly non-emotive bride. She was young and elegant, a dancer in her white dress and long veil. It all seems so surreal she told us as she came to our table. The flowers were red roses with white lilies and orchids, their gentle scent came to us from the middle of our tables. As if summer had not left us in this dark winter evening, a warm world far away from the snow and ice. The magic beckoning me to some other place and some other history. The dancing began and I wanted to join them. All of the young women and men throwing themselves into the music with a jubilant abandon. No, I was matron, condemned to sit in this chair and dream of moving myself to the undulating music and losing all of these dark thoughts. So I smiled but wondered at how quickly I have become one of those who sit pounding at the bars of this cage of convention.

She fell, the white haired groom's mother. As the blood red of the rose in her stopped beating. Her heart had given in and the fun turned to horror as death plucked her up. The dark December was upon us as her daughter in the beautiful green dress screamed out her name. Mother, wake up, a chill over the room and confusion. The DJ calling for a doctor or someone to help her. Suddenly action broke out over the lethargic room, was it minutes before it happened? Seconds? It felt like forever she lay there on the floor with her heart stopped. Luckily someone performed CPR. The very exclusive country club did not have an emergency defibulator, which might have made all of the difference. We were told to go to the next room, all of us dressed and silent except for one drunk fool. The bride sat heavy in her dress, face etched as she discovered that her day of joy would always carry this weight. The groom sat by her side, as helpless as his father who stood mutely over his wife. I did not look at this scene, knowing I would not soon forget it since my mind grasps and holds pictures. I did not look as they wheeled her out to the ambulance and as her daughter the bridesmaid crying held her daughter and went to get in a car. As the bride walked out next to me, her makeup creating lines where the tears had fallen. Knowing that tonight was not part of the fairytale that it was meant to be. She put on her coat, resigned to her wedding night at the hospital. We all left silent, as we got our coats. That will not be me and I begin to rip down the bars of this cage. I am so shaken I cannot paint well today. I feel so damn mortal and I hope for the bride that the silver haired woman is ok.