Minus One

My sister is engaged.

This is not breaking news. It happened in December, not long after my parents and I ended our visit to Disney World. Incidentally, it was less than a month after I met her fiance for the first time. I was at my parents' house when the news came in. My mother was thrilled, my father and I less so. Why?

I often joked that Ashley, 3 ½ years my younger, would marry before me. Women tend to marry younger than men, she was in a relationship the lion's share of the time (I have been single for the great majority of my hormonal life), and it was an easy bit of self-deprecating humor. That he proposed was no surprise; we had expected it even if we didn't know exactly when.

Still, knowing it is coming does not prepare you for when it actually happens. He seems like a decent enough guy¹, but that's not really the point. When a female sibling gets married, it's like she's leaving the family². Is that fair? Probably not, but I don't write the scenario. If she reads this, she'll insist that's not the case and she'll mean it. But it won't change anything³.

It's hard for me, and not just because I'm a little afraid people are going to start bothering me about when I get married⁴. Even when I wasn't on speaking terms with my parents, I was still in contact with her. Along the same lines, my relationship with her has never been rocky like it has been with my parents. She's still the one I care about the most from my childhood home by a wide margin. And I feel like she's being taken away from me.

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1 I barely know him. This is what I say when people ask me about him.

2 If you've seen “Father of the Bride,” you have an idea what I'm talking about.

3 If I get married, will it feel like an addition to the family? Good question.

4 Not soon, if ever.