A Bit Mental by Jimi Hunt

Author:Jimi Hunt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO000000, book
ISBN: 9781743432259
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2013-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

A month or so later, Jo and I were both invited to our friends’ wedding. I didn’t want to see Jo. I knew it was going to be too hard so I made up my mind I wasn’t going to go. However, the couple had asked me to drive the bride to the service in my recently acquired Kermit-green 1974 Cortina station wagon. (With only 48,000 kilometres on the clock it had been irresistible.) Of course I agreed. On the day, I drove the bride to the church, followed her in and went and sat way over on the left-hand side by myself.

I had plenty of friends at the wedding but I didn’t want to bother anyone. I could see Jo out of the corner of my eye but I tried not to make eye contact with anyone, especially her. As the ceremony was starting she was sitting with a guy from the gym that we both knew. She got up and came and sat next to me. I couldn’t look at her. She held my hand as I cried quietly to myself. She told me I looked so sad she felt she had to sit with me. What she didn’t realise was that I couldn’t think, right then, of a worse thing to happen.

Sitting in a church, a place I didn’t feel comfortable in anyway, listening to vows being spoken by people I love about how much they loved each other and promising to be with each other forever and to love each other forever . . . The words cut me like a knife, especially when they said ‘in sickness and in health’.

I was sitting next to the person I loved. She had left me after telling me she never wanted to be with me again. And she was holding my hand and telling me everything was going to be alright. No wonder I was crying. It was heartbreaking.

I spent the entire ceremony looking out the window to the left. I can’t tell you much about what happened in the church that day. I can, however, tell you everything about the real-estate agency’s window across the road. The words on the sign, the letters in the words, the font they used, how the corners of the sign were peeling and the colours fading from long-term exposure to the sun. And I can tell you how the grass on the lawn hadn’t been cut recently enough to be perfect for a wedding. I can tell you everything about nothing. I just couldn’t deal with what was going on inside the church that day.

After the service it took about 30 minutes for everyone to leave the church and I spent that time talking to the guy from the gym who had been sitting next to Jo. I drove the bride and groom to the reception venue ahead of the crowd so they had time for the obligatory photos. I ended up wandering through the dining area reading the names around each table.

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