All I ask is that I survive long enough to see my daughter's wedding.  To walk down that aisle with Jillian and give her away.  To dance that one last dance with my little girl.

If a deity watches over us, it's not such a big request.  I don't ask for a miracle, for the tumors that riddle my body to disappear.  I beg only for the slightest delay of the inevitable.  What's the point to omnipotence if a god can't grant wishes like that?

The oncologist has given me two months, give or take a couple weeks.  If the couple weeks are given, then I'll make it.  If they're taken, I'll fall short.

"Please, let us change the date," my wife, Theresa, implores, her hair newly streaked with gray and her eyes sunken as they were not before my diagnosis.

But I won't let Jillian scrap her fairy tale wedding just to guarantee my presence.  She has planned every last detail down to centerpieces with an odd number of petals so she and Sean can play the childhood game of 'loves me, loves me not.'  I refuse to take that away from her.  We won't change the date.  I will make it.

***

But the give or take turns out to be taken, by a deity too impotent or too callous to intervene.  My final breath comes ten days before the wedding.  I flee the used-up husk that was once my body, and speed across the great divide to that place where only spirit remains.

Upon my arrival, I discover that deities drive hard bargains after they've been mocked.  There is no offer and counteroffer; I can take it or leave it. I am granted one last trip back across the great divide, but at the cost of my immortal soul.  My eternity will end when Jillian's honeymoon begins. The price, merciless in its savage revenge, is one I readily pay.

And so my spirit is there as 'The Wedding March' begins.  Theresa gasps and then, a split second later, so does Jillian.

I wrap them in my love.

"He's here," Jillian says, wide-eyed, as the bridesmaids and maid-of-honor move up the aisle.  "I can feel him."

Theresa, her hands shaking, hugs her.  "But not spooky.  In a good way. The best of ways."

"Yes!"

As Jillian prepares to take her first step up the aisle, she whispers those most magical of words.  "I love you, Daddy."

She proceeds up the aisle, her hand linked into the crook of Theresa's elbow, but also intertwined with mine.  Theresa gives Jillian away, kisses her on one dimpled cheek, and hugs her.  With the kiss, I taste the salty dampness of Jillian's tears.  With the hug, I smell her perfume.

Sean and Jillian are pronounced husband and wife.  She stopped being my little girl long ago, but even now, especially now, she is still, and will always be, my little girl.

The church gives way to the ballroom, and now the band begins to play. Theresa takes Jillian's hand.  But so, too, do I, feeling the moist touch of her palm and the ring upon her finger, smelling the fragrance of her auburn hair.

I hold my little girl's hand, the time I have left so brief but oh so sweet, and we begin to dance.

One, two, three.  One, two, three.