Three songs of great importance

It is a strange song to close such a monumental day upon, he insinuated. 

The DJ I hired was perplexed by my musical choices. Apparently I was truly different from his other brides.  To him it made no sense, but I could see it. In my mind, the ones I loved would get it. They'd move, they'd be moved and it would bring us all back together for the finale and we'd smile, we'd laugh and we'd remember it always. 

I was right.

The last song played on my wedding day was Miss American Pie. 

A rowdy, dwindling, tired crowd rose up and sang 
it out.

Circled round me on the dance floor, arm in arm they swayed.

Everyone knew the words.

"Good ole boys were drinking Whiskey and Rye, singing this will be the day that I die..."

It was very ME.

and in some small, surreal way, it was the day I died, a portion of me did anyhow

Two more songs for the day mattered most to me. Not necessarily the one's you'd imagine either. 

The second was for my whole family.  Music had been a part of every aspect of our life.  It still is for me and my own children. I have a personal soundtrack in fact.  This one was for my brothers, sisters, parents and the relatives who were the constant cast and crew on the periphery for the saga of our upbringing.  Sweet Caroline.  "Good times never seemed so good"

Third song, the last song I really cared about, was maybe most important of all...

My Father-Daughter dance.

I was not "Daddy's Little Girl".   I was not sugar and spice, everything nice.  My older sisters were, but by the time I came around, I was not, had never been and still could not be categorized as a little girl. Perhaps I was born an adult.   My mother tells me that her grandmother held me when I was first born and said, "This one's been here before", maybe I came into the world as an experienced human being. Whatever the secret is, that song, that traditional music was not meant for my father and I.

It was hard to find a summary of what he'd come to mean to me. It was hard also, because I knew that I now meant more to him then I ever had dreamed I might.  I had made quite a few mistakes as I was growing up.  I'd strayed off the never firmly intended/unintended path. I'd often felt that I slipped through the cracks in the sidewalk of the life I was meant to walk on. I was a near miss. I could have been something rather spectacular, but by the time I was old enough to go there, those who were meant to shove me that way were disappeared into their own lives. Maybe this is what happens when parents divorce and have many young children to raise? Maybe by the time the younger, more difficult ones come of age, there is no one left with the energy or interest to guide them and so those like me go unattended?  In any event, somehow, maybe because of a hint of potential innately buried inside me, I had rallied and rounded several dark corners and here I was, on my wedding day, in an awesome setting, in a dress that my father bought for me, which was more beautiful then I could have hoped for.   For he and I, I chose this song; because at some point, he'd taken me back in and helped me right the small wrongs that seemed bigger then they were. He propped me up, he gave me chances and space and support. He gave me the love I wanted and needed and he showed the pride in me that I had no idea I could earn. He clapped loudest as I hurdled the gates and low brick walls placed before me, while I ran steadily, at last, a course in life that would make me a prize winner.   If not for him, if not for the last few years I'd spent in his house, repairing, regrouping, re-centering, I'd not be who I was that day and not who I am right now. Who I am right now is a woman who loves her father, loves him as if there never was a day in all my life where things were less then just plain right.