Last One Standing

I never wanted to be the last one standing. If it were left up to me, my parents and brother would still be here with me. Life, however, had other plans and they are all gone now.

The natural order of events has the children outliving their parents. My father passed away over 30 years ago and, while his death was hard on my mother, she accepted the loss and went on. “Losing a child is different,” she used to say. Mother had not stopped mourning the loss of my brother when she died two years ago.

Today was my brother’s birthday. I find myself remembering little things we did as children and later as adults before his death in 2001. The memories are there, but they are becoming soft around the edges. That is unsettling.