Now.it's.you

It's strange, grief.

He looked me in the eye and said, "He's gone. Now it's you."

I felt the catch of breath and filling of tears. Three words. "Now it's you."

It's the weight I've felt, the sense of responsibility for leading the family even before he died. It came with taking on their bill paying, advocating for him during hospitalizations, watching to be sure that she wasn't overdoing it in her role as caregiver.

It never felt right from the sense that the roles flipped. Parent became child and child, parent.

It was right, though. It was love in action, and who better than his child to love him in that way? Who better than his wife to love him through the final years?

With my birthday coming, I feel the loss more acutely. On the gray, drizzling Tuesday one week out, I cried most of the way to work.

It's this simple: he's the guy who witnessed my first day in this world. He's the guy who taught me to ride a bike. He's the guy who was proud of me, who I could always count on. He's the guy who told me it was the best sermon he'd ever heard preached, the day I first spoke at church. He's the guy who came to hear me again last summer, when he was so exhausted from the debilitating illness that he didn't think he could make the 45-minute trip.

And he's the guy who always sang "Happy Birthday" with Mom on my birthday, his tenor harmonizing with her soprano - giving his dry comment, "There she goes" when she dissolved in tears partway through.

This year, there will just be a sweet soprano.

And someday there won't be a sweet soprano. (Though I hope that's a long time in the future.)

Then it will be fully true.

"Now it's me."