Theo looked at it for a long time and said, “Mrs. Harris, I can’t take this.”
And I closed his hand around it and said, “Yes, you can.”
And he cried. And so did I. And Daniel went and looked at a tree.
We do that less now. Grief doesn’t leave, it just changes what shape it’s in. There are stretches where Jack feels like something that happened a long time ago to somebody else, and then I’ll hear one of his stupid phrases in my own head — the bank has insurance — and he’s standing right beside me.
There Was a Fourth Line on That Note and Theo Didn’t Read It at the Funeral
He showed it to me two weeks later, at my kitchen table.
Underneath the part about judgmental relatives, in my son’s handwriting, there was one more line that nobody in that chapel heard.
