When my best friend was married, it was to an amazing woman, but I admit before they wed I struggled with ambivalence. I was recalling the speech I gave as Best Man at the reception to someone dear to me a few nights ago, so I wanted to put it down here. This is the best I can remember of what I said, all those years ago. No doubt M and A remember it differently. But here is my recollection:
"I've known M for half my life. We've been through everything together. He's my best friend. I've always been fiercely protective of him and for years no woman was ever going to be good enough for him, as far as I was concerned. A, I know, is perfect for him and he for her; I think we all saw that clearly during today's ceremony, if any didn't believe it before.
"But today I got to see something no one except the groom, got to see. Standing to M's side and a small step behind him, I got to see over M's shoulder and into A's eyes. I got to look into her eyes as she said her vows; got to see into her eyes as she listened to M saying his. I saw a well of such deep love that I was dumbfounded. I already knew M felt as much for her. Today I saw her radiate as much for him.
"And a few paces away from them, I saw both M and A suddenly separate from the rest of us. We couldn't touch the thing they shared. They were too much a part of each other to share that paired isolation with us. So as we stood in the garden, and as we watched them, they were apart--in a clear bubble or orb that demarked a space none of the rest of us could enter into.
"That globe they were in, that they're still in--it's their relationship, and I saw it. They were suddenly within it, creating that new space themselves, that new thing out of the intense, perfect regard they gave each other. A new world within this one, that was made up of just the two of them, but was immediately more than just these two people. I don't know who else saw it, that bubble of otherness they shared, but I did today. I saw it. And I was humbled.
"So I propose a toast: to my best friend, and to his best friend."
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