The wedding was on a Tuesday in February, in a VFW hall off Queens Boulevard.
I had a name tent card in my coat pocket. ‘Frank DeMarco, Logistics Coordinator.’ A conference from 2001.
I kept it all these years. A joke at first. Then a kind of anchor.
The groom’s father asked me to toast. I was the unlikely one—the mover who’d hauled their furniture for thirty years.
I stood up and told about moving the bride’s grandmother’s piano. Three flights in a February snow, legs off, swearing under my breath.
‘You can’t go home again,’ I said. ‘But you can learn to leave the keys behind.’
Afterward, I slipped outside and dropped the name tent card into a trash can by the door.
It felt lighter than I expected. Like lifting something heavy for the last time.