This past weekend, I went to Charlottesville, VA with my parents and paternal grandfather for my cousin, "Leah’s" wedding. I don’t know most of my dad’s side of the family all that well. Leah grew up in Pittsburgh, which is easily a six-hour drive from Lambertville. Needless to say, we didn’t spend too much time together growing up. We’ve always gotten along, I just wouldn’t necessarily say I know her. And I’d only met her fiancé twice. The first time was at a family dinner, where he said: "Rick Santorum is not conservative enough for me." I am a fierce bleeding-heart liberal. At that exact point in time, I was a fierce bleeding heart alcoholic, and immediately chugged three glasses of wine to stop myself from choking.

My mom and I are loud. Family trips involving cars are bad enough when it’s just me and my parents. My mom and I go stir crazy, start playing with puppets (that’s right, Kuhl Family Vacations require props), and eventually breakdown and sing loud obnoxious songs about my father riding the break (I’m aware this may make us sound incredibly obnoxious, but if you were in a car that came to a sudden halt every five minutes for twelve hours, the resulting nausea would inspire you to distract yourself from the overwhelming urge to barf, too). I decided early on that my dad’s love of breaking makes up for his hatred of pit stops. This man is notorious for saying: "Well, there’s a rest stop in 2 miles, but I bet there’s a BETTER one in 102."

Ever the clever 13 year old, the summer before eighth grade, I realized that yelling "TAMPON!" at the top of my lungs was more than enough to terrify my dad into pulling over for the next available bathroom.

More after the jump...

My dad’s side of the family is not loud, and his father is definitely the least likely person in the world to tolerate such antics. This meant that I was going to spend six hours of quiet nausea in the backseat of a car so that I could go spend a weekend with a bunch of conservatives I didn’t know. Oh yeah—I’m also not a big fan of weddings. Everyone there tends to be married or in a serious relationship. I go with my parents and get to say fun things like, "I just graduated from Penn… Well, now I sell soap—but I really want to act!" and "Yes, you can take that chair. No, I’m not saving it. Really, I didn’t bring a date."

Needless to say, I was entirely prepared to come back and write a bitter, snarky column about going to a wedding filled with evil couples and scary Republicans. It was going to include lots of quips about the pain I endured while smushed into a car with my immediate family.

The ride to Charlottesville provided me with plenty of material for that column. My grandfather woke me up singing more than once and yelled at my mom a few times when she tried to help my dad with directions. But the longer I wasn’t allowed to comment on anything (my mom pinched me every time she sensed I was about to pick a fight), the more I decided to focus on what was going outside of the car—and it was beautiful.

Fall is my favorite season. My favorite part is watching leaves change. I find parks in Philly when I can’t leave town, and I wander through my hometown, Lambertville, when I can. I will now add "drive South" to my list of wonderful ways to enjoy the autumn.

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with the South. My not-so-inner bourgeois Yankee says: "Don’t go there! It’s filled with scary Klan members who will hate you for majoring in African American Studies," which is partially true (though the North certainly has its fair share of evil bigots as well). But the part of me who LOVES the outdoors and rodeos and spent most of high school dreaming of becoming a country singer says: "You cross that Mason Dixon Line, you cross it now, and you remember to turn up the Dixie Chicks!" Since I didn’t get much say in whether I went on the trip last weekend, that was the voice I decided to stick with.

It was well worth it. The wedding took place at the King Family Vineyards, which are right at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in Crozet, VA. It was at sunset, and as soon as I saw Leah head down the aisle, I cried. She looked so beautiful, so happy, and more than anything, peaceful. She didn’t look nervous. She looked completely at ease, entirely natural. I feel like maybe I shouldn’t be shocked by that, but it did strike me. She didn’t have a big fake grin plastered on her face, she didn’t look scared, and she didn’t have huge teardrops rolling down her cheeks. She was serene; she looked like she was doing something good, something more than right for herself, something she was happy to do.

The rest of the ceremony was equally wonderful in its simplicity. It ended just as the sun went down, and everyone eventually made their way into the tent where tables had been set up for dinner. Again, I found myself crying as soon as my uncle got up and made a toast to his daughter and new son-in-law, and then all-out bawled when the groom’s brother stood up and fought back tears through his entire speech right before dessert.

The next morning, my parents, grandfather and I piled back into the car to drive home. We had one stop planned along the way: Arlington National Cemetery, where my grandmother was laid to rest this past August.

I went to her funeral, but was out of the country during her burial. Her tombstone was just put up a few weeks ago, and we wanted to make sure my grandfather got to see it, since he’s not likely to drive from Central Jersey to Arlington on his own ever.

Again, the day could not have been more beautiful. The sky was clear and all of the trees in the area were just beginning to turn. We found our way to Grant Avenue, Section 30, parked the car, got out, and scanned the headstones, looking for her name.

My mom found it. "Florence F.," it reads, and she’s buried right next to a magnolia tree. My parents and I stood back a bit as my grandfather arranged flowers we’d brought from Leah’s wedding on her grave. And then he crouched down and silently sobbed, his face red and crumpled.

When I was in seventh grade, my grandmother fell and broke a few bones. The resultant trip to the hospital revealed that not only did she have severe Osteoporosis, but also that she had suffered a few mini-strokes earlier that year. For the past ten years, we all watched as her health steadily declined. My grandfather never left her side for longer than a few hours during that time. The longest he was away from her was however long it took for him to visit a cardiologist in Philadelphia every few months, or the one-day trip he took in that entire period, also to Arlington National Cemetery (to see my uncle’s father’s burial). About two weeks before my grandmother died, he went to the hospital for a week to have surgery. A few days after he got home, was stabilized and on the road to recovery, she passed away. We were all sad. We still are. But he was crushed. She was his life. The last time I saw her was just after I graduated from college, during a visit to their nursing home. As my parents and I walked from her room in Skilled Nursing to my grandfather’s apartment in Independent Living, one of the nurses stopped us and said: "The love these two share is amazing. I have never seen two people more devoted to each other in my life." She was absolutely right. Watching my grandfather looking down at his wife’s grave, and then take his time stepping away and preparing himself to get into the car and head home, hours away from it, that nurse’s words were the only thing on my mind.

I can think of nothing more wonderful than watching two people who are truly in love grow together—from the early stages of a relationship, to spending their lives together, traveling wherever life leads, and, eventually, leaves them.

Image courtesty of this site.