My brother-in-law got there first.
Mitch Harris is fifty-one, he lays flooring, he is not a man with a lot of vocabulary for this kind of thing, and he walked over and stood in front of a seventeen-year-old in a dress and said:
“Theo.”
And Theo looked like he was about to be hit.
Mitch cleared his throat about three times.
“I owe you an apology.”
“It’s okay, Mr. Harris.”
“No, it isn’t. I was judging you before you even sat down.”
“Honestly, it’s okay.”
And Mitch looked over at that casket and said:
“No. It isn’t.”
And he put his hand out, and Theo shook it, and I had to go stand in a hallway for a minute.
After that it was a line. People hugged him. Four or five told him Jack would have loved it, which was true.
And Daniel’s aunt Rosalind, who is eighty-four and from Kentucky, patted his arm and said:
