In the short space of a couple of weeks, I watched as a radiant young bride floated down the aisle to her groom - and as two women I admire said goodbye to their husbands in different ways.
Life's contrasts, for sure.
One wife lost her husband to illness after a long marriage. The other had the ultimate pain of placing her husband in a care facility because his Alzheimer's had become unmanageable at home.
And then there was that wedding, drenched in the sweetness of young love.
Three vastly different women in vastly different circumstances. And I've been left, for days, thinking of them. And yes, of myself as the years roll on.
The bride was archetypal - hopeful, thankful that she had found the one and looking to that long road of what the priest called "never-ending love." Am I just jaded, or was that overly optimistic?
For me, the losses of the older women felt powerfully real and personal.
On nights when I can't sleep, I think of them, one an official widow, the other a de facto widow.
How could that radiant bride ever imagine their losses?
The widow probably just yearned for one more movie, one more walk at dusk, one more dinner or card game, or just being held one last time by those familiar arms.
The wife of the man whose last years have been spent in an endless blurry confusion - what would she feel about those lyric words exchanged by a bride and groom on a beautiful day?
Both the older women could say with impunity that they had hung in there when the times were tough. They had stayed through the lousy and scary and stubborn times, and put one foot in front of the other. No, it was not "never-ending love" every day.
"I can't remember your name, but I know that I love you."
But that's part of the package for couples who know that marriage sometimes means growling at one another through the endless annoyances. His stupid jokes. Her nagging. The realisation that marriage is a precious but imperfect state.
For my friend who read the terror in her husband's eyes when a "stranger" who once was a close friend came for a visit - there was no adequate consolation I could offer.
"How I loved him!" she said to me in the email she sent when she did what she had to. "They're so good to him at that place, and he'll adjust. But will I?"
I tried to respond by saying all the right things, the sensible things. How well I understood her longing just to have him near.
And someday I will share with her one of the most poignant declarations imaginable, one I heard about from a man with a ravaged memory to his wife:
"I can't remember your name, but I know that I love you."
As for the widow, a brilliantly literate woman, there was a different but similar longing. Hers was just the longing for more.
"He's played a part in my life since I was 22 years old," she said to me. Now that she's five decades past that age, I can understand the overflow of memories. And oh how I relate.
Standing outside a stone church as the laughing bride and groom dashed into the sunshine, I felt the predictable joy and hope of such moments. And I also thought how much they have to learn in the years beyond this sunny day.
One profound lesson will be that loving can cost a lot.
But that not loving can cost so much more.
The Philadelphia Inquirer