Last man (woman) standing

I’m an only child with children and grandchildren. When my husband died in 2007, followed by my mother four weeks later, and then my father in 2014, I became the last man standing. This is not an original thought but a truth I recognized when I heard it put that way by a new friend I recently met, a neighbor who has been widowed longer than I and is now her family’s last man standing. That title confers both opportunity and responsibility.

At our age, more bad things are apt to happen. And we will therefore be given more opportunity to model responses when things don’t go our way. Because one day, one of our children might very well be the last man standing and they need to see what that looks like.