I'd been trying for weeks to explain Rebecca and Andrew's wedding to Mona. Andrew is Gil's brother. Rebecca is my best friend of five years and such a good friend to Gil that she was holding his hand when he died. Mona is my 2-year-old.

If you want a challenge in communication, try this on for size: Explain in terms a toddler will understand the extraordinary chain of events that has brought us to this wedding day. How it was that in only two years, my husband's family suffered through a separation and divorce, celebrated a birth, weathered a horrible illness, withstood the gut-wrenching blow of death, and now welcomes a new bride into the fold. In a way I should count my lucky stars Mona is only 2, because it simplifies things immensely. When it came down to it, two sentences sufficed: "Andrew and Rebecca will be a king and queen." And, "We'll eat some cake."

So here we were in the white-and-gold showroom of the same pastry chef who baked my wedding cake five years ago. Sitting at a round table, facing down enormous plates of assorted cake slices, were Rebecca, her mother Eileen, Mona, and me. Three generations of women did our best to be dainty as we forked white cake into our mouths, and as Rebecca and her mom prepared to fork over a tidy sum for the privilege of serving same to 150 valued relatives and friends a week hence.

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