Serendipity IV

Andrew and I celebrate our sixth year of marriage today, and this remembrance is a fitting reflection on where we've been.

West Beach, Gulf Shores, AL; September, 2004

When Andrew and I met, his family had a beach house in Gulf Shores. He and his family had spent a lot of time here over the years during holidays and vacations, and our first trip together was a spring break excursion here. We were already really into each other, but I think it was on this trip that we really fell in love, in that never-look-back kind of way.

When it came time to plan our wedding, Andrew and I both immediately thought of the beach house as the perfect setting. This plan encountered some resistance at first, and we even booked another location for our date. Eventually, everything came together, and we had the wedding of our dreams on the beach at the house, in the company of about 200 friends and family. Everyone in attendance had a great time.

Our wedding was on Sunday and was a dream come true. We had a great time at the reception and an exceptional time at the after party. Some guests left on Monday, but we were leaving Wednesday. Several members of my family, including Mom and Madison, were staying through the next weekend. That was until Hurricane Ivan started wreaking havoc on in the Caribbean and Florida, leaving a path of death and destruction in its wake. One of the projected paths had it headed straight for us, while another had it hitting New Orleans. An evacuation order was made for many of the areas of the Gulf Coast, prompting the early departure of my family.

One week after our wedding, the hurricane made landfall about 10 miles east of the beach house. The accompanying 14-foot storm surge badly damaged the beach house. The giant Victorianesque house next to ours and many others were completely gone. In assessing the damage afterwards, Clayton, Andrew’s dad, said he thought that the vanished house had floated up and hit our house on its way out to sea.

The family spent the next year working on the repairs, overseen by Clayton. The sadness and misery of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was eclipsed, for us, by Clayton’s sudden and untimely death a few days later.

As for the beach house, the repairs of the previous year were mostly undone by Katrina. With a grieving family, no one to oversee further repairs, and a 400% increase in property taxes, the decision was made to sell the house. Our wedding was the last shebang for the house, which is amazing. The whole family and many friends with ties to the house got to see it off on its last hurrah ever but unwittingly, so that the last event lacked the bittersweet pain of saying goodbye. And, most bittersweet of all, this event was the last time we were all together with our families intact: since then, we’ve lost Clayton, Uncle John, and my mom.  But the love in our families remains strong and grows ever deeper through it all.