The Last-Minute Best Man

30 Minus 2 Days of Writing (2013)
Day 13: “Unintended”

Sometime around January 3rd of this year, my brother, J, gave me a call and asked me to be the Best Man at his wedding. He caught me by surprise with this request, but I considered it a high honor, so of course I accepted. J’s wedding was scheduled for the weekend of January 12th — and yet there he was, calling to invite me to play a huge roll in the nuptial proceedings with little more than a week’s notice. Prior to that phone call, J had told me that he and his fiancée weren’t planning to have traditional wedding parties filled with bridesmaids, groomsmen, and sentimental speeches. Stupidly, I believed him.

J is my older brother, and I’m not in the habit of telling him no. So when he called me that day in early January to tell me he had changed his mind, I accepted the honor of Best Man readily, and asked him what he needed me to do. “You’re not going to have to do much during the wedding,” he told me. “Just hand me the rings when it’s time.”

That seemed easy enough.

“Oh, and by the way, this means you’ll have to give a speech at the reception. It’s not a big deal. You won’t have to say much. Just keep it simple, and everything will be fine.”

Damn you, J. You know this is me we’re talking about, right? You know, Mr. “KZ Writes Good?” My self-respect wouldn’t allow me to half-ass something as important as a Best Man’s speech. So I got to writing. I did what I could for a week’s worth of work, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I cannibalized the final paragraph of a prior Best Man’s speech I had written for another wedding.

In the end, the speech turned out fine. To tell you the truth, I think it went better than fine. Take a look below to see how it went.

For What It’s Worth: A Best Man’s Speech by KZ

Up until very recently, I was under the impression that there weren’t going to be any formal wedding parties. That would have meant no Maid of Honor, no Best Man, and most certainly no speeches. Then, with just about a week to go, my brother gives me a call and asks me to be his Best Man. Of course I said yes. How could I refuse my big brother? It’s an honor. So I had a week to write a Best Man’s speech, which was totally enough time, so thank you, J. In fact, I just finished it this morning. I didn’t really have time to proofread it, but I think it came out just fine.

[I pulled out a folded piece of paper from of my pocket.]

“Joe and I have been brothers for almost 32 years. His lovely bride, Caroline, is quite the catch.” [Those aren’t their real names. I purposely botched them for this gag.]

Is that any good? That’s all I have written down, sorry. It’s a work in progress.

J is of course my older sibling, and as luck would have it, I love him like a brother. I used to idolize him when we were kids. I used to want to dress like him, I used to want to be tall like him, I used to want to play sports like him — I used to want to be him. J has always been three years ahead of me, reaching all of life’s major milestones a little bit before I did. And I’ve been cheering him on as proudly as a little brother ever could, celebrating his triumphs like … [painful pause] … playing hockey?

Okay, I’ve got another one. Like … [painful pause] … learning how to rollerblade — to play hockey.

Wait, hold on. One last one. Like … [painful pause] … reaching 6-foot-one.

For hockey.

Okay, clearly J and I don’t don’t talk much these days. But I still love him like a brother, and nothing’s going to change that.

J is a good man, a good friend, a good brother, and there’s no doubt in my mind that he’ll make a good husband. With C in his life, the future shines very bright. Can we have a round of applause for C? [pause for applause] I was too lazy to write a transition, so thank you for helping me bridge the gap.

As I look around this room, I see a lot of familiar faces. I also see a lot of faces I don’t recognize. The wonderful thing about tonight is that we’ve all gathered here today –- friends, family, basically a roomful of strangers to each other — but we’re all united under one roof by a single purpose, and that’s love.

I’m sure I’m not the first one to tell you that love is far from easy. If you ask me, a lifetime of genuine love is one of the most difficult endeavors a person could ever endure. Love is hard, and love is sometimes work. You know that Bible verse that people always read during weddings, 1 Corinthians 13? It tells us that “Love is patient, love is kind.” I agree that love is patient, and love is kind, but love can also test your patience, and test your kindness. Love is hard, and love is sometimes work, and inevitably, the proverbial honeymoon always seems to come to an end.

Now…long after tonight, long after this extravagant party, this crazy Chinese gauntlet of food, the honeymoon will be over for J and C, and all they’re going to have left is each other and a handful of promises. But that will be the time to make things count. That will be the time to remember why they fell in love, and why they got married. That will be the time to remind themselves why and how much they truly matter to each other. That will be the time to make things count. And I have faith that when that day comes, they will make things count — and they always will. Because love is hard, and love is sometimes work, but when you find that right somebody — that one person you want to spend the rest of your life with — love is completely worth it.

Few things in this world could make me happier than this moment in time — this moment in my brother’s life when he proclaims his love to world and he says to his lovely bride, “C, you are worth it.” Ain’t love grand?

Love is the grand experiment of life that constantly surprises us by joy, one generation after the next, and always with the same old bag of tricks. The human dance wouldn’t be the same without love to guide us with all of its familiar refrains. Robert Frost once said, “Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.” That innate desire lives inside all of us, and it begs us to dream, challenges us to grow, and dares us to care about someone other than ourselves. Love is that immutable constant of the human spirit that invariably keeps us all human. Love is our guarantee that the human spirit, for all of its frailties, will always have something worth celebrating.

So tonight, we’ve all gathered together, my friends, to celebrate C and … whatever your name is. “J”, is it?

I wish you health, I wish you happiness, and above all other things, I wish you love.

To J and C.

30 Minus 2 Days of Writing (2013)
A painful exercise in forced inspiration brought to you by
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