Not hopeless. Nobody said hopeless. But it was the afternoon the floor moved.
And Daniel and I had sat in the hospital parking garage for forty minutes after that appointment before we could drive home, and when we got home our son and his best friend were upstairs watching a movie about a monster with a visible zipper.
Then He Said the Sentence That Took the Air Out of Me
“Jack asked me if I’d speak at his funeral.”
Daniel sat all the way down.
My chest just stopped working. I’m not being dramatic — there’s a thing that happens where you can’t get the next breath in, and I had to put my hand flat on the pew in front of me.
Theo looked over at us.
“And I told him to shut up.”
His eyes were filling.
“I was so mad at him for even saying it. Like actually mad.”
