Tweets from the day of Amy's mother's wedding in Arkansas.

• 9:01 AM PT: Suited up for wedding. It is EXPLETIVE EXPLETIVE hot. We are melting here dammit!
• 9:09 AM PT: @joshjanus Jeff: "Wrong part of the South. This is the teetoaling evangelical part, not the mint julep Scarlett O'Hara part of the South."
• 1:43 PM PT: Happy wedding day, Mom.
• 1:46 PM PT: @bellesouth that's still her nickname! I have great photos.
• 1:57 PM PT: Current temp: 104. Not that we are bitter. Or sweating. Or anything.
• 6:56 PM PT: Back at hotel. Out of dress clothes. Ready to pick a state and stay there - preferably one that isn't an oven.
• 9:05 PM PT: @gfmorris Crap. That ends when you're no longer single? No one told me. I mean, I only do it if it's Jeff and me sharing the jug...

The title of the post contains the ending of my mother's vow to Paul -- whom she met in a ballroom dance class -- as they lit candles honoring the spouses they'd each lost to cancer in years past.

You had a long road getting here, Mom, and now that I've met him, I can see how happy he makes you.

(Backdated one day to her wedding day, since I couldn't edit photos in the hotel room.)

Amy packs up, leaves Washington state, and flies to Arkansas. Culture shock in 3...2...1. 24 hours of travel tweets.

For my friends in Atlanta, you have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity coming up this weekend.

I'll be in Atlanta this weekend. With my mother.

Want to join us for a memorable dinner in which you get to sit at the table and threaten me by offering to tell her all the juicy, dirty stories we both know you know about me?

Saturday night, yo.

Dad -

I didn't really call you that while you were alive, and it feels strange to call you that now, but I didn't know any other way to start this letter.

I've become a person who grumbles at roadside memorials for victims of traffic accidents but who writes something about you every year on the anniversary of your death. I wondered about that for a number of years before I realized that I was closer to your death than I was to your life, and I've spent the years since trying to come to terms with your absence.

This entry covers it better than most:

I was sitting to the right of Geof, enjoying an Over the Rhine concert that he'd talked me into attending, when I saw my silenced phone light up. The number implied Arkansas, and I had the familiar lump of dread that always came when a number starting with 501 showed up on caller ID.

It was my mother, and thanks to the ongoing performance, I had no way of answering it before the phone would go to voice mail. I watched, and waited, and saw no new voicemail notification pop up. No message.

When the musicians took a break, I called my mother back, and Geof was the only witness to the look on my face, whose look he told me later was quite priceless. The news? My mother's engagement.

I don't have a pretty run-in for you here, or a way to lace together these words in a way that has meaning or resonance. In the end, they're just words, the words of someone who is up at one in the morning and who is thinking through keystrokes instead of being asleep, like she should be.

Father's Day.

I chose to keep my mother entertained this weekend by keeping her busy. The original plans for Saturday consisted of Kat and I taking Mom out to Boaz so that she could do some shopping at Boaz' outlet stores.

Just when I thought I was done—just got an email from my mother. My dad's got to go in for some more tests on his eye. Apparently he's been having problems with blurred vision, and the doctor can't tell if it's an infection affecting his optic nerve or if he's had a minor stroke that is impairing his vision.

Dammit. Not another health scare. [The enormous aneurysm discovered on November 1 and repaired on November 20, the spots on his lungs on December 12 that turned out to be pneumonia scars, and a few others that I didn't document.]

Hopefully, just an infection. More details as I learn them.

Sigh. Time for one of those moments where I look up and say, "Not again. I'm not laughing, dammit."

Another email from Mom tonight. This one had words that I've known that I would hear someday: "The doctor told us yesterday that [your] dad has some spots that have shown up on his lungs, so we are scheduled for more surgery Dec. 26 for [a] biopsy on them."

Both of my parents are heavy smokers, and have been so for as long as I can remember. It's not necessary for me to say the word; you undoubtedly know what I, the nonsmoking child of two chain-smokers, have on my mind.There are other things this could be. It is true that my father has had pneumonia several times, and this could be scar tissue resulting from those illnesses. He was also exposed to asbestos during the 1960s; this could be a reaction to that.