My son performed being okay, for us, while he was sick, and the only person who knew that was a sixteen-year-old boy on his bedroom floor.
There were weeks in the spring of 2025 when Theo Vance saw more of my son than I did, because Daniel was working first shift and I’d gone to overnights at the distribution center specifically so one of us could always be at the hospital, and that arrangement kept our insurance and cost me about eleven weeks with my dying child.
Theo never complained about any of it. Not one time. Not one single time in fourteen months.
So When He Walked Into That Funeral Home in a Red Dress, I Did Not Understand
Saturday morning. The chapel at Prine & Sons on Hollister Road. A hundred and forty-one people, which I know because the funeral director counted.
And at about nine-forty, Theo came through the back doors in a red dress.
