On Sunday morning I made too much food.
I knew I was doing it.
I still peeled six potatoes when four would have been enough.
I set out the big serving dish.
Then I placed five plates on the table.
Daniel found me staring at the extra setting.
He did not tell me to put it away.
He simply stood beside me.
After a moment I took the plate back to the cupboard.
It was an ordinary movement.
I felt as if I had lifted something terribly heavy.
Theo texted at eleven.
Can I still come?
I wrote back immediately.
Yes. No pressure. Lunch is at one.
He arrived at twelve forty-five with Mara and a blueberry pie from the supermarket.
“I didn't have time to make it,” she said.
“You didn't have to bring anything.”
“We know,” Theo answered.
He wore a blue sweater Jack had once given him for his birthday.
I recognized it but did not mention it.
At lunch we talked about Mara’s new job schedule and a repair Daniel was trying to finish in the garage.
Theo described a college course that had become harder to attend after Jack’s final hospital stay.
“I missed two assignments,” he said.
“Have you spoken to the instructor?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
Daniel put down his fork.
“You should. There may be an extension available.”
“I don't want special treatment.”
“Asking about the policy isn't asking for special treatment.”
Theo nodded without promising anything.
I wondered how many practical problems grief was creating for him while adults praised his loyalty.
After lunch Mara left for work.
Theo stayed to help Daniel move a heavy toolbox.
I watched them through the window.
They walked slowly, speaking little.
Jack used to stand between them in the garage and pretend to supervise.
I had a sudden urge to call him for help.
Instead I returned to the kitchen.
Theo came inside an hour later.
“Could I go upstairs?”
“Of course.”
He stopped outside Jack’s room.
I stayed in the hallway, not close enough to crowd him.
When he opened the door, he stood still for a long time.
The room was bright.
I had opened the curtains that morning.
Jack’s desk was covered in notebooks.
The small lamp still pointed toward the place where he had worked.
Theo looked at the bed.
Then at the chair by the window.
“That chair used to be mine,” he said.
“It's still there.”
“He used to yell at me for putting my feet on the cushion.”
I smiled.
“He yelled at me too.”
Theo walked over and sat down.
He folded his hands.
For a moment I thought he might ask me to leave.
Instead he said, “I keep thinking if I close my eyes, he'll come in and complain that we're being depressing.”
I leaned against the doorframe.
“So do I.”
He stared at the comics on the nightstand.
“Can I take one?”
“Jack specifically asked you to choose a book.”
Theo turned.
“He did?”
I brought the letter.
He read the sentence carefully.
Then he looked along the shelves.
He did not choose the most expensive book or the signed edition Jack had treasured.
He chose a battered paperback about space travel.
They had both read it when they were younger.
“He dropped this in a puddle once,” Theo said.
A water stain warped the cover.
“He blamed me.”
“Was it your fault?”
Theo smiled.
“Mostly.”
I was glad he could still smile.
But I also saw how exhausted he looked.
“Have you had anybody to talk to besides Mara?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“I talk to people.”
“About homework or about Jack?”
His shoulders dropped.
“Mostly homework.”
I told him the hospice team had given us information about bereavement support.
They offered services for close friends as well as family.
“I don't want somebody making me explain him,” he said.
“You wouldn't have to start with Jack. You could start with not sleeping.”
He turned the paperback over in his hands.
“Maybe.”
That evening Daniel asked whether Theo wanted a ride home.
“I can walk.”
“We know.”
Daniel held out the car keys anyway.
Theo laughed softly.
“You're impossible.”
“Also true.”
They left together.
I went upstairs to close the curtains.
Jack’s room looked almost unchanged.
Only one paperback was missing.
I found that oddly comforting.
Something of his had gone to someone who would treasure it.
It did not mean he was disappearing.
It meant the people who loved him were learning how to live with what remained.
Before Theo came for Sunday lunch, Daniel and I had argued about the table.
He wanted to leave Jack’s chair exactly where it had been.
I wanted to move it because the sight made me physically ill.
Neither of us was wrong about what the chair meant.
But we had stopped listening.
“It's just furniture,” Daniel said.
“Then why are you so angry?” I asked.
He did not answer.
I went into the garden and pulled weeds that barely needed pulling.
When I came back, Daniel had placed the chair against the wall.
He had not put it away.
He had not left it at the table either.
It was the first compromise we had managed without somebody apologizing through tears.
Later, when Theo arrived, he noticed the chair.
He said nothing.
I worried he would interpret the change as an attempt to erase Jack.
Then he asked whether we still had the wooden board game Jack had broken the previous summer.
“I think it's in the cupboard,” I said.
They had played it during one of the weeks when Jack was too tired to leave the sofa.
Theo opened the box and found missing pieces.
Jack had drawn substitutes on scraps of cardboard.
One said IMPORTANT KING.
Another said PROBABLY A HORSE.
Theo laughed and showed them to Daniel.
My husband held the tiny pieces with care.
“He always made things more complicated,” Daniel said.
“He thought he was improving the rules,” Theo answered.
We played a short game after lunch.
Theo won because Daniel forgot which cardboard piece was supposed to be the knight.
For several minutes we laughed about how Jack would have accused him of cheating.
The game ended without anyone getting upset.
I noticed that small success.
The next day, however, I cried when I found a stray playing piece under the sofa.
That was how the weeks went.
A moment of warmth could be followed by a wave of pain so sharp that I had to sit down.
I began keeping a notebook beside my bed.
Not a diary about becoming stronger.
Just a place to write memories before they slipped away.
One page described Jack learning to whistle.
Another described Theo convincing him to enter a school running race even though neither of them liked running.
Some entries were only one sentence.
I wrote that Jack once asked whether a fish could get seasick.
I wrote that he used to leave half-finished water glasses all over the house.
I wrote that he always checked whether Theo had a seat when visitors arrived.
Writing did not make me feel better every time.
It stopped me from trying to keep everything in my head at once.
When Daniel asked what I was doing, I showed him the notebook.
He added one sentence of his own.
Jack said my dancing looked like a confused refrigerator.
I laughed so hard I had to wipe my eyes.
We left the notebook open on the table for a while.
It was not a memorial anyone else needed to see.
It was simply a record of our boy.
Click here to continue reading: PART 6: The School Assembly Jack Never Attended and the People Who Remembered Him Differently
The Red Dress in the Funeral Chapel and the Promise Our Son Had Kept from Us
Part 5 of 16
