My father died 11 months before my wedding, and I thought I\u2019d have to walk down the aisle without him.<\/p>\n
Then my older brother Nathan, who has Down syndrome, quietly asked, \u201cCan I do Dad\u2019s job?\u201d<\/p>\n
He meant walking me down the aisle.<\/p>\n
I said yes immediately.<\/p>\n
Nathan took it seriously. For weeks, he practiced the steps, the turn, the handshake\u2014everything. He even called the church himself to make sure he knew exactly what to do.<\/p>\n
Everyone loved the idea.<\/p>\n
Everyone except my future mother-in-law.<\/p>\n
She worried Nathan would appear in every wedding photo and actually said, \u201cI don\u2019t want those photographs.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was furious, but I didn\u2019t tell Nathan.<\/p>\n
Instead, I secretly hired an extra photographer whose only job was to capture him.<\/p>\n
On the wedding day, Nathan wore Dad\u2019s cufflinks and counted every step under his breath.<\/p>\n
At the altar, he surprised everyone by pulling out a piece of paper.<\/p>\n
\u201cDad always walked with Sarah when she was scared,\u201d he read. \u201cDad can\u2019t do that today, so I did.\u201d<\/p>\n
The entire church was crying.<\/p>\n
Weeks later, my mother-in-law saw the special album filled with Nathan\u2019s photos.<\/p>\n
She asked for a copy of one picture.<\/p>\n
Later, I learned she had framed it in her home.<\/p>\n
Nathan never knew she had once wanted him out of the pictures.<\/p>\n
As far as he knows, he asked to do Dad\u2019s job.<\/p>\n
And he did it perfectly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My father died 11 months before my wedding, and I thought I\u2019d have to walk down the aisle without him. Then my older brother Nathan, who has Down syndrome, quietly asked, \u201cCan I do Dad\u2019s job?\u201d He meant walking me down the aisle. I said yes immediately. Nathan took it seriously. For weeks, he practiced …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10095"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10097,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10095\/revisions\/10097"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}