My Old Wedding Dress Was the Surprise Key to Long-Ago Loss

Standing on the carpeted pedestal encircled by full-length mirrors, I gazed at myself, the disheveled bride-to-be, with a mix of glee and satisfaction. After dragging my mother through three bridal shops and stepping into countless sensibly priced wedding gowns, I had finally found "the dress."

"It's a one-and-only," the salesperson confided. "A model's sample. The lace factory in France burned down so they can't take orders for this gown."

"I believe it was made for you," she added, glancing up at my 5-feet-10-inches and down at the hem of the dress brushing my toes.

I looked … elegant. The gown was skirted in heavy cream-colored satin with a bodice sparkling from pearls and tiny crystal beads. The neckline and sleeves were sheer lace, with a collar of pearls gleaming in the light of the airy uptown boutique.

"And the price," the saleslady said, raising her eyebrows. "The price has been drastically slashed. This dress would already be gone if more brides could get into the sample. It takes a type."

It takes my type, I thought. The type I dreamed of being, of someone who could turn into Cinderella for a day. Of someone who would walk down the aisle in a gown fit for royalty, marry her prince and live happily ever after. The dress on sale was still beyond my budget, but how could I put a price tag on a lifetime dream come true?

Waiting at the altar, my handsome fiancé cried as I moved slowly down the long, red-carpeted aisle to become his wife. Wrapped in the scent of my lilac and white rose bouquet, trailing my heavy cream-colored satin train, I stepped confidently toward love and the forever promise of my life.

After the wedding, before leaving on a London honeymoon, I took my wedding gown to a dry cleaning expert who charged me a large chunk of money and promised to carefully preserve my dress for all eternity.

Maybe he didn't literally say eternity, but no matter — the dress lasted far longer than the marriage. Divorced with three daughters, I dragged that triple-sealed, 25 lb. dress box from basement to basement for nearly 30 years. None of my daughters were interested in wearing my wedding dress at their less traditional ceremonies. They each found a special dress that suited their own dreams, leaving me alone with my big brown box.

"What if that's not even your dress in there?" asked my daughter Hanna. "And you've been taking care of someone else's wedding gown for half your life."

I shrugged. It was like keeping a holy relic in the basement. I would continue to guard it and all that it symbolized until I spotted a sign from heaven that my services were no longer required. Someday I would let the past go.

When I was seven years old, I moved to a small brick house with my mom and two younger brothers. My parents were young and recently divorced which was an exotic thing to be in the Midwest in the early sixties. I had to explain my situation to kids my age who asked questions ("But where's your dad?") and who stared at me, silent and wide-eyed, when I answered.

Luckily, my movie star-beautiful mom dazzled my classmates at Brownie troop meetings and school events, and I used her popular presence as a shield to deflect the general public sentiment about broken homes, specifically mine. I was a plain little girl with a bad haircut and some big baggage, but I had evolved some really creative survival skills.

Splitting an even deeper gash in the family, my 5-year-old cousin Donna passed away from a childhood disease. Blonde-haired, with an impish grin, Donna was two years younger than I was and a far nicer little girl. I loved her very much and we played together without the conflict I manufactured everywhere else as my home life deteriorated.

In an extra dose of tragedy, Donna's death blew a hole through family relationships, putting loved ones on lonely paths that led us straight away from those we needed most. 

For a year, my grown-ups circled through their sorrow and anger and alcohol, and I trotted along a parallel path trying to make sense of how it all fell apart. Living under adult radar gave me peculiar freedoms: I was kicked out of Brownies for bad attitude, often wore my comfiest dress to school multiple days in a row like a uniform, and spent weeks doing nothing but reading Laura Ingalls Wilder books hidden in my lap at my classroom desk (my math skills never recovered).

I was not just sad, I was stranded. Frantic to understand, I missed my cousin who no one talked about, and analyzed whispered stories about my uncle who woke from dreams, screaming in the night, trying to save his baby girl. 

Years later, my mom told me how she had driven my bereaved aunt to a high-end children's store to choose a dress for Donna to wear in her small white casket. Both my mom and my aunt were in their twenties, and neither had much money. They carefully chose a pink party dress, fit for a princess and laid it on the cashier's counter.

The salesman, instantly summing the two women up as budget shoppers by necessity, was alarmed by the dress choice. 

"This dress is part of our children's couture line," he explained, waving the price tag. "We do have other, more reasonable gowns."

My aunt shook her head, my mom's hand on her elbow. "No, I will take this one," she answered.

"Well then, perhaps madam will consider purchasing the dress in a larger size," the salesman said with a pained smile. "So you get your money's worth as your daughter grows into it."

That recounted conversation has haunted me for a very long time and I'm guessing it haunted my mother, too, as nothing else ever prompted her to speak to me about Donna or the sadness of my cousin's death. 

Facebook messaging might not be the way we expect to be contacted by the Universe with heavenly direction, but I think our Higher Being has adapted to the times. Catching up on Netflix with a bowl of chips while mindlessly scrolling through my phone, I settled on a post by a woman who had chopped up her wedding dress.

If someone is posting on social media about chopping up a wedding dress it usually follows a stated intention to set an ex-husband's motorcycle on fire. This post was different. The Facebook commenter had cut up her gown to make four perfect infant dresses, and she was donating them to her local Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) to offer to parents whose beloved babies were to be buried.

A perfect dress like my cousin Donna once needed. From a wedding dress like the one sheltering in my basement. It did not take angels singing in my ear to recognize an open circle I could close, and I began to search for non-profit groups dedicated to deconstructing donated gowns to make burial clothing for babies and young children.

Volunteer sewing groups are sometimes affiliated with local hospitals, but I found "Rest in His Arms Angel Gowns" on Facebook: 

"We are an IRS registered 501c3 non-profit that takes donated wedding dresses and with much volunteer help, converts them into beautiful angel gowns, pouches and sacks that are used as burial garments when a baby does not make it home due to miscarriage, stillbirth or other infant death. Our angel gowns are distributed to hospitals, funeral homes and individual families all across the USA free of charge as our gift of love to help those grieving the loss of a baby."

There are several steps to ensuring a gown is accepted for donation. It must be clean and odor-free, and if it has been preserved, it must be removed from its wrapping. My wedding dress unboxing was uneventful. Under two layers of heavy-duty cardboard was a shiny gold box full of tissue-wrapped satin. I hung the dress from the top of a closet door and chased the cats away from the petticoat net rustling below.

My marriage failed, but in the wisdom of far too many intervening years, I knew the dress hanging in front of me was not about a broken union. My dress signified hope and the bravery of vulnerability. I walked down the aisle in that dress feeling beloved, and I'm sending it forward to the knowing hands of seamstresses who will add to its power.

My wedding dress, in all its French lace glory, was made for things bigger and finer than my own experience. It will provide several exquisite gowns for babies who couldn't stay and won't ever remember, and a shared thread of comfort for their grieving parents and families who will never, ever forget.

Jean MacLeod Jean MacLeod is a writer and social media specialist working in communications for the state of Michigan. She is busy prioritizing her bucket list of backpacking destinations. Read More