Friday morning Connor completed the preliminaries for his grandfather at the Provo Temple. Elly attended the baptism, as did Wanda and Lynne and Connor’s parents. They returned to the temple chapel at two o’clock that afternoon: Elly, her mother and grandmother. Uncle Oh and Aunt June. Connor and his parents. Martin, Lynne, Glenn, and Aunt Wanda. Plus Susan. A much larger party than had attended their wedding.
“It’s not as if I’m getting married,” Elly had argued, not wanting Susan to interrupt her vacation on her account. “And Melanie’s not coming.”
“Not a problem,” Susan insisted, reminding her that Melanie was spending Thanksgiving in Arizona with Greg. “Meeting the parents. That’s way more important. Almost like getting engaged.”
The sealing room was soon crowded with relatives, including one grizzled old man who shook Connor’s hand and said, “You know, son, always knew we’d make the som’bitch one of us sooner or later.”
His wife exclaimed, “Willard! You’re in the temple!”
The old guy grinned.
Elly sat with her mother. Across the mirrored room, Connor sat next to his father. Connor caught her eye and smiled. In a rush, she found herself reliving the same moment from three months before. She felt a shock of nervous anxiety and blushed.
Elder Packard walked to the altar. “We are gathered here today to seal the marriage of Connor and Margaret Mia McKenzie. We don’t usually conduct work for the dead in such a formal setting. But today’s work is for the living as well as for the dead. The sealing of a marriage and the reaffirmation of the wedding of my granddaughter and her husband.
“Joseph Smith taught us that ‘turning the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers’ was ‘the greatest responsibility in this world that God has laid upon us.’ Christ himself declared that his calling was to ‘heal the brokenhearted and to preach deliverance to the captives.’ Those who died without the opportunity to accept the gospel, who cannot ‘be made perfect’ without us, as Paul wrote in the Epistle to the Hebrews.
“The means by which this work will be completed is described in the 128th section of the Doctrine & Covenants. To those who perform these ordinances, the Prophet revealed that ‘whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.’ That’s what we’re about today, to ‘turn the hearts of the children to their fathers,’ according to which all of us shall be made whole.”
Having completed his homily, he motioned to Elly and Connor, who knelt at the altar. On this occasion, though, as Elder Packard spoke the words of the marriage covenant, they affirmed their union on behalf of the dead, sealing the marriage of Margaret Mia and Connor McKenzie for all eternity.
They got to their feet. Elly pressed against Connor’s side like a bashful newlywed.
Elder Packard held up his hands. “A moment, please.” The room fell into a puzzled calm. “Due to the unusual circumstances of Elly and Connor’s marriage, one custom was omitted. Now would be the perfect time to correct it. Susan—”
Susan bounced to her feet, taking a small velvet box from the pocket of her temple dress.
“Oh, Connor,” Elly said, realization dawning on her.
Susan opened the box. Connor took the first of the bands and slipped it onto his wife’s ring finger. Elly blinked the tears out of her eyes. She retrieved the second band and fitted it to her husband’s finger. They kissed and were married all over again.
“They are still man and wife,” Elder Packer concluded with a smile.
They were suddenly surrounded by family. Elly’s mother embraced her. “I’m really glad you came, Mom,” Elly said.
“My beautiful daughter,” she whispered, “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
Elly turned to her grandfather. In his face, she saw the look of a man forgiven, a man who had cast off a long-held regret. This is what marriage should do, she thought. It should merry us. She held Connor’s hand as they stood at the foot of the altar, between the mirrored walls, in the company of all their kin.
In the sliver of the eternal now, the threads woven by their ancestors had bound together countless generations separated by space and time, making cousins of those who otherwise would have known nothing of one another. They were no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the Saints, and of the household of God.
“Connor,” Elly whispered. She nodded at the mirror on their left.
And there, for a moment, glimpsed through Saint Paul’s clouded glass, appeared a mischievous samurai, a laconic Scot, a dark-haired man and woman, young and newly married. Likenesses that merged and coalesced with countless others. The shadows of all those who had gone before and all those destined to come.
Reflections of their pasts. Lights shining into the future. They were the dreams their ancestors dreamed and could not believe. And this was the burden of their lives and the weight of the obligation they owed: to dream each day anew, and to follow the paths wherever those dreams might lead.