Those moments happen less often now.

But grief doesn’t disappear.

It changes.

Sometimes Jack feels impossibly far away.

Then I hear someone repeat one of his jokes, and suddenly it feels as though he’s standing beside me again.

I still think about the morning Theo entered the chapel.

The whispers.

The uncomfortable looks.

Daniel starting to stand.

My own immediate judgment.

For several minutes, nearly every adult in that room believed we understood what we were seeing.

But we hadn’t asked a single question.

We saw a young man in a red dress and invented explanations before giving him the opportunity to share his own.

Jack had known that might happen.

In fact, he’d predicted it.

There was one final line in his handwritten note that Theo hadn’t read during the funeral.

He showed it to me much later.

Beneath the instructions about wearing red, Jack had written: