Bridesmaid Dress No. 2

This dress wasn't worn by me. But it figures into Bridesmaid Dress No. 3, so I have to tell the story. This is also not really my story, so I'm a little hesitant to tell it. As such, I'm changing a few details to protect the innocent.

It stinks to be the biggest bridesmaid in the bunch. There's no way around it. I have been that girl. And I have stood beside that girl, thankful I was not her.

That's the case with Bridesmaid Dress No. 2. The biggest one among us didn't show up for the fittings.  In fact, she was kind of MIA for most of the pre-wedding festivities. There were rumblings that the dress didn't fit, but no one knew for sure what was going on. I remember there being concern that she might not show at all.

Try making that news palatable to a young bride on her big day, when emotions are running high and there's an over-abundance of estrogen in the air.

She did show up. The dress had obviously been altered as there were additional panels of fabric on the sides of the bodice that didn't quite match the rest of the dress.

Oh, and she had her upper arms, all the way to the elbows, wrapped in ace bandages. Clearly visible by one and all.

My heart broke for her.

To this day, I'm still not sure if the ace bandages were to cover up something on her arms she didn't want us to see of if she had to wrap them, compression style, to get them in the sleeves. It doesn't matter, really. Whatever the reason for all of it, you could tell she was miserable. Embarrassed probably doesn't begin to scratch the surface.

Then she did what I was sure I couldn't have done.

She stood up straight. She stuck out her chin. And she carried on.

A lot of life happened to all of us after that day. We graduated from college, got our first jobs, moved from our hometown. Some had kids. Some got divorced. One of us was killed in a car accident. Some married again. Rounds two and three of babies came. Some of us got fat. Some didn't change that much.

I ran into this old friend a year or so ago on an errand day. She was with what I assume was one of her kids. She looked fantastic. I had heard that she had lost a lot of weight (somehow when you lose weight, people tell you about others that do/did, too) and I'd heard she was a runner.

As soon as we recognized each other, we did that, "Oh my gosh, I thought that was you! How are you? Do you live here? Gotta run! So good to see you," thing people do when they don't know what else to say. Over-zealous smiles in place, voices too loud and too cheerful to be totally believable.

I'm happy for her. I don't know her well enough now (or then, really) to know how what carrying extra weight meant for her life. I don't know if affected her head like it affected mine. I don't know if she thinks about it at all ... for all I know, she's been healthy for a long, long time and never gives it a second thought. I'm also sure she doesn't care one bit about what I think.

And that's why I didn't take the time to tell her how much her experience that day oh-so-long ago affected me years later.