Eleven months after my father passed away, my older brother Nathan asked me a question that broke my heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCan I do Dad\u2019s job at the wedding?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nathan is 31 and has Down syndrome. He and Dad had always been incredibly close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dad had once joked that Nathan would need to practice walking me down the aisle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nathan took him seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For weeks, he practiced his steps, called the church, and even asked Daniel which hand he should use when shaking his hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI practiced,\u201d he kept saying whenever anyone worried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then three weeks before the wedding, my future mother-in-law made her feelings clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She said she didn\u2019t want Nathan walking me down the aisle because his face would appear in the wedding photographs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was devastated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Daniel immediately made one thing clear:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNathan is walking you down that aisle. There was never another option.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We kept her comments from Nathan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, I secretly hired another photographer to capture every moment of his walk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the wedding day, Nathan stood beside me wearing Dad\u2019s cufflinks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As we walked down the aisle, he quietly counted every step.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then, just before sitting down, he pulled a folded piece of paper from his jacket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSarah is my little sister,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDad can\u2019t do that today, so I did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then he added:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDad told me I am her big brother and I should take care of her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The entire church was crying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Weeks later, our wedding album arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One photograph showed Nathan standing at the altar in Dad\u2019s cufflinks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My mother-in-law saw it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She stared at the picture for a long time before quietly asking:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCan I get a copy of this one?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, that photograph hangs in her hallway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She tells people proudly:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat\u2019s Sarah\u2019s brother, Nathan. Their father died before the wedding, so Nathan walked her down the aisle. He practiced for three weeks because he wanted to get it right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nathan never learned what she had originally said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As far as he knows, he asked to do Dad\u2019s job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everyone said yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And he did it perfectly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eleven months after my father passed away, my older brother Nathan asked me a question that broke my heart. \u201cCan I do Dad\u2019s job at the wedding?\u201d Nathan is 31 and has Down syndrome. He and Dad had always been incredibly close. Dad had once joked that Nathan would need to practice walking me down …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21968,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21966\/revisions\/21968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}