A year later…many anniversaries… and a Royal Wedding

Hi everyone,

 I have tried so hard to keep updates on here as frequent as possible, but the time just gets away from me ( as I am sure it does everyone) and finding a few minutes free time to write posts is difficult. I’m home alone at the moment, so am taking this bit of peace and quit as a good opportunity to get on and write a few words.

It’s been a year… a year since Fuat arrived in the country, a year since my diagnosis, a year since we got married … sometimes it seems like it’s gone by so quickly, sometimes it seems like it has been a lifetime.

Now that we’ve celebrated our first anniversary ( several times 🙂 )….. our life has started to calm down a little bit. Tommorrow is another one year anniversary, but I’ll wait to talk about that one until tomorrow 🙂

With the celebration of a Royal Wedding, on the other side of the pond, it had us thinking about our wedding ( or marriages.. yes you read that right. We had more than one … sort of…)  … We never really had a chance for a wedding.

For several weeks before Fuat arrived, I searched for what I would consider to be the perfect dress to be married in and searched for the best way to get married and have at least a small part of our family there. With the timelines ande visa contraints, we wouldn’t be able to plan a huge wedding… we’d have 90 days from the time he got into the country, so it was going to be short and simple. That’s what I wanted in the first place, so that was fine with me. I looked everywhere for the dress I really wanted and it just did NOT exist. No matter, I would worry about that later.. I had to figure out how to actually get married with my mother and brother in Michigan and my father in Las Vegas. It was not going to be easy… there was no way I was going to make everyone happy and it was really stressing me out… but I decided I would wait until Fuat got here.

Fuat arrived on March 21 and we started making plans. On March 30th, we went to see the Imam at the Richmond Mosque to have the Religious wedding.. so, on March 30th we were married in the eyes of God. Our plan of getting married, and having a wedding with at least some of my family present, was not to be. It turns out Godf had other plans for us.

On April 15th, we received the diagnosis of Stage IV Ovarian cancer and, as I lay in the Emergency room holding Fuat’s hand and listening to the Dr. give my mother the diagnosis over the phone, I knew our wedding would never happen… so we made it official and notified our families that we had gotten married and then… told them about the diagnosis. We gave up our dream of a wedding… and got ready to deal with all that was to come.

When we were married, we were alone.. wearing jeans and T-shirts, no fancy outfits, no party afterwards, no one to say congratulations…no one to even witness it… our witnesses were complete strangers… It was not what we planned and a little frightening.. ( and then Fuat put the car in reverse and ran over a poor little tree.. but that’s another story :)   We didn’t even have rings yet. It was so sudden, so unplanned… not really the kind of day you dream about since you were a little girl. But sometimes life is what happens when you are busy making plans.

On April 25th, we had a small ring ceremony in our living room. Fuat was still in jeans.. but he looked wonderful :)  Teena and Nate, our dear friends, were with us while Mom put our rings on our fingers. To me, this was our wedding day… again, not what we had planned, not what we had dreamed about, but it was beautiful. As mom put my wedding ring on my finger, and then her engagement ring and wedding band next to it, I couldn’t help but cry a little. When she put Fuat’s ring on his finger, she had tears in her eyes as well. Fuat had a huge smile on his face, but I could feel his hand shaking in mine. At least this time he couldn’t drive over an trees 🙂

So when it comes time to celebrate our anniversary no one is really quite sure what day to celebrate. To us, we have two anniversaries, March 30th and April 25th ( and some people celebrate it on April 15th… but in our hearts April 15th is no day to celebrate)… It doesn’t really matter what day we celebrate as long as we can say we made it through the year. There were some times I wasn’t sure we would, and when we first started out I wasn’t sure I would be here to write these words a year later. But again, God had other plans and we were blessed with a Stage Iv diagnosis being changed to Stage I after my surgery.

It’s been a rough year, but through it all my wonderful husband has stood by me and held me hand. There were times when I know the year was harder for him than it was for me, but he never gave up… on me.. on our marriage.. on my health… on living in this country. We had it all thrown at us within the first year.. “Sickness and health.. better or worse.. richer or poorer” but we’ve made it to this point and can happily look toward year # 2.

This morning my dear, sweet Fuat woke me at 5:00am so that I could watch the Royal Wedding. He knew how much I wanted to see it, so he made sure I was awake.. and as I watched Kate and her sister get out of their car I couldn’t believe it.. there was my wedding dress. The one I had dreamed about.. Not on Kate.. on her sister.

 That was the dress I had dreamed about for my wedding and it made me think about how I would never have that wedding… but then I realized it didn’t matter.  I have the most wonderful husband in the world. He has been here for me through the worst part of our lives and I still wake up to his smile every morning.  So it doesn’t matter if you get married in old jeans and a T-Shirt or the wedding dress you’ve been dreaming about. All that matters is that you are with someone who makes your heart happy and that you can honestly say you are glad to be with that person.

We may not have had two billion people watching us get married, or even one member of our family, but to me we still had a royal wedding because we were together.

Maybe someday, fate and God will make it possible for us to have still have our wedding.. INSALLAH…but if not, I’m ok with that. I have my prince. And if we do.. well, at least now I know where to find my dress 🙂

We love you all!!

Jenn & Fuat