Let's Play SCRUPLES!

Always Love - Addison Road (mp3)
Suffering - Satchel (mp3)

Tom Hanley and Lauren McGee got married in an Indianapolis ER. Their wedding party was in a serious car accident mere hours before their scheduled wedding. One of the groomsmen was pronounced dead on the scene. Other members of the wedding party suffered minor injuries. For reasons we might never truly understand, the couple, both in their early 20s, chose to go through with their wedding that evening in the hospital. Instead of a reception, they held a prayer service for their fallen friend.

If you can read that AOL report on these events without getting at least a little bit misty, then bully for you. Damn thing rips me apart. I've read the story at least six or seven times now, and although I don't drench my keyboard with tears, I find myself doing the whole jerky-breathing and sniffly thing.

Before we play Scruples, you need to go read it. Otherwise you won't be emotionally invested enough to play properly. So grab a few Kleenex and read, and then come back after you've collected yourself. Go ahead. The rest of us will wait for you.

(Insert Jeopardy music here)

Scruples. Remember that game? We played it a lot in our church youth group when I was a teenager, and lots of kids in the group would lie their asses off about what they would or wouldn't do. I mean, the "right" answers were usually pretty obvious.

Something about being presented with a highly imperfect, emotionally-charged scenario and having to come down on one side or another of that situation makes for fascinating internal drama and great discussions. So it should be no surprise that a story at The Frisky last week received 42 comments covering the gamut of reactions.

"What should they have done: get married or postpone?"

It probably says more about me than about those who commented that the level and extremity in some of their judgments really bothered me. It probably speaks to my namby-pamby relativist nature that, because I can't possibly know all the details and explanations for their decision to get married in that emergency room, I don't feel comfortable saying whether it was right or wrong.

Maybe that dead groomsman's parents told them to get married because that's what he would have wanted. Or maybe they knew that, no matter how long they postponed their wedding, the day would always carry that very heavy cloud of tragedy and sadness, that the only way out was through. Maybe they were in shock. Maybe... Lots of maybes. Few facts.

I've got plenty of theories. They involve the circle of life, and symmetry, and sex, and friendship. And all of those theories say that what they did, getting married in the ER like that, had to be damn near impossible to pull off, but it was the best of the pathetic and awful options.

How horrifying, if they postponed that wedding, and then one of them went through some serious level of guilt or panic or whatever, and next thing you know, they break off their engagement? Next thing you know, they wake up and realize their good friend died in a car crash for two people who never even ended up getting married. Perhaps it's selfish, but such a chain of events would destroy me. It would f*** my psychological shizznat all up in ways I'd be afraid I might never recover.

So here's to emergency room weddings. And here's to hoping none of y'all and no one you know or love ever has to contemplate that option.