Two weeks before Joe and I were to be married on the roof of a chocolate factory in downtown St. Louis, we learned that my father had hemangiosarcoma. We heard the word "cancer."

A year earlier, I stood in front of a silver-framed mirror in a bridal store, sinking my fingers into the soft silk of my wedding dress. I called my father on FaceTime. With tears in his eyes, he said, "I really, really can't believe it." His bold laughter echoed off the walls.

Three days after I said yes to the dress, I awoke in the middle of the night to the ominous glow of my iPhone. I learned that my father had been shot point-blank in the jaw in an attempted carjacking. The next few months were agonizing. Joe nursed my mother as she slept in the hospital and comforted me through my tears of fear, anxiety, and disappointment.

The day my father was discharged from the hospital, Joe drove him home. They jammed together night after night: Joe played guitar and my father tapped the piano keys.

My father survived.

We planned our wedding with renewed spirit. Just as I walked arm in arm with my father down the monotonous hospital corridors.

But cancer was a cruel and twisted irony. Six days before my father was supposed to walk me down the aisle to "Here Comes the Sun," I lay beside him in his hospital bed. We watched "Yesterday". My father had to pause in the middle of the movie. Sleep had engulfed him.

In college, I called my father at 1 a.m. just to chat. My father was painting in his studio until dawn and seemed to be endlessly awake. When I answered the phone, his voice was bouncing with adrenaline. I could almost smell the thick stench of oil paint and canvas glue. He was a painter. A pianist. A writer. Philanthropist. His creative and active spirit blossomed in the moonlight. When the dorm was dark and my roommate's snores filled the silence of the night, when my mother was buried under the covers with her cell phone in sleep mode, when my friends were passed out on the couch, I could always count on a response from my father.

That night - yesterday paused indefinitely on my laptop - I buried my face in my father's chest and felt him dreaming. 7:30 PM. The stars were just beginning to shine through my bedside window. I waited for the sun to come.

It was a few days before my father was transferred to the ICU. He was in liver failure. I rushed to the hospital from my wedding hair trial. We hadn't cancelled the big day yet. Part of me felt that as long as our ceremony was safe, my father's illness was something he could wake up from.

Joe learned Taylor Swift's "Soon You'll Get Better" on guitar. He plucked the strings until his fingers stung, trying to bring hope to my father through the common language of music. But three days before Joe and I were to be married, in a flurry of music, dancing, and euphoria, my father fell into an unconscious state from which he never awoke.

We played "Blackbird" from our iPhones. The music drowned out the sound of my stoic bridesmaids calling 250 of my loved ones from the hall to tell them that the wedding would not happen.

Two days before I was to wed Joe under an arch of purple flowers, I placed a silver band on his finger at my father's bedside. My mother, who had danced carelessly around the jewelry store while the three of us sipped free champagne as we picked out Joe's ring a few months earlier, glanced behind me in the ICU, where she was sitting on the floor, her hands clasped behind her back, her eyes glued to my father's. My mother was holding my father's hand, seeking strength.

We cried through our vows and felt triumphant in the face of the unimaginable. [27] [28] After the ceremony, Joe and I gave my father a gift we had made for him. We painted a simple message on a white platter. We held my father's hand and read aloud to him: "All the love we know, we learned from you."

Without walking down the aisle or attending the reception, we had no idea what was coming next. We walked together to the sterile waiting room, amazed as dozens of friends and family applauded for us. My mother gave a speech. In hard times, we must turn to each other for comfort, strength, and courage.

My father's childhood best friend pulled out his guitar and Joe and I danced to "With a Little Help From My Friends." He twirled me around in the fluorescent light, and for a moment I felt spellbound.

Twenty minutes later, my father was transferred to hospice. [That night I called Joe "husband" for the first time. We lay on the couch beside my parents. We fought against time, against exhaustion. I stayed with my dad for another minute after I woke up. The pale blue gown turned into a soft cherry-red shirt that enveloped my father. It didn't smell like the hospital, it smelled like Dad.

We took turns saying goodbye to Dad. When it was my turn, I sank into his arms and played the song that was to be our father-daughter dance." Good night, my angel, now it's time to dream," Billy Joel sang. I listened to my father's heartbeat." Someday a child may cry, then sing this lullaby and you will always have a piece of me in your heart."

The day Joe and I got married, we watched the rain pour down from the windows of our childhood home. Someone murmured, "Thank God it wasn't a beautiful day." The house was full of wedding guests, tied up in mourning. Joe and I fled to my room, where my pearly white silk wedding dress hung limp and unworn in the closet.

Joe and I turned to each other for comfort, courage, and strength. We learned under unimaginable circumstances that we had little control over anything.

We learned that plans and promises are not the same.

Our plans were obliterated before our eyes. Not just our plan to have a wedding, but also our plan for my father to be a grandfather to our children. He would teach them to paint, play the piano, answer the late-night phone calls, and love them with all his heart, just as my father had loved us. A plan for the future that includes all of us.

Recovering from the shooting, my father went to the piano keys and paintbrush. He wanted something beautiful, so he painted the canvas with bright colors. He presented me with a painting of a blue and black winged bird that he had painted during his recovery. Underneath the painting was the title "Flying Again" written in messy pencil letters. It was then signed, "Thank you Laura - Dad."

It had been six months since Joe and I were married. We sit at the kitchen table planning our new wedding. The walls of our apartment are decorated with paintings of my father. I plan to display them at our new wedding reception.

I pick up a pencil, just as my father once did with his paintbrush. I begin to look for something beautiful.

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