I thought the hardest part of losing Jack would be learning to live without him.
I hadn't understood how many small things would keep bringing him back to me.
A plate left in the wrong cupboard.
A terrible joke on television.
The sound of someone laughing in a way that reminded me of him.
Even the red dress stayed in my thoughts.
For days after the funeral, I kept seeing Theo standing beside the microphone.
I remembered how frightened he had looked when I approached him.
I remembered his apology.
And I remembered how quickly I had decided that he was doing something wrong.
I wished I could take those first few minutes back.
But wishing had become a habit.
I wished I could hear Jack come down the stairs.
I wished I could ask him what he wanted for dinner.
I wished I could tell him about the things people had said at the funeral.
Most of all, I wished I could ask him why he had kept that conversation with Theo from us.
I never got the chance.
Daniel and I returned home after the service, and the silence seemed different from the silence we had known before.
Before the funeral, there had always been another task waiting.
A phone call.
An appointment.
A decision.
Now there was nothing left to arrange for Jack.
His bedroom remained exactly as we had left it.
His desk was crowded with school papers.
His clothes were still in the drawers.
A few books lay beside his bed, and his old mug sat on the shelf where he had put it.
I stood in the doorway for a long time.
Daniel came up behind me.
"Do you want me to put anything away?"
I shook my head.
"Not today."
He nodded.
We left the room alone.
That became our way of doing things for a while.
We made decisions only when we had to.
We avoided the ones that could wait.
And we tried not to ask each other questions we couldn't answer.
A few days later, Theo came by the house.
I heard the doorbell while I was in the kitchen.
For one brief moment, I expected Jack to call from upstairs and ask me to answer it.
Then I remembered.
I wiped my hands on a dish towel and opened the door.
Theo stood on the porch.
He was wearing jeans and a plain shirt.
No red dress.
No nervous smile.
Just Theo.
"Hi, Mrs. Harris."
"Come in, sweetheart."
He hesitated before stepping inside.
I noticed that.
He had never hesitated at our front door before.
For years, he had walked straight into the house as though it were an extension of his own.
Now he seemed unsure whether he still belonged.
That hurt more than I expected.
"You don't have to knock every time," I told him.
He looked at me.
"Okay."
I wanted to say more.
I wanted him to know that nothing about Jack's death had changed the place he held in our family.
But the words wouldn't come out properly.
So I asked whether he wanted something to eat.
He said he wasn't hungry.
I made him a sandwich anyway.
He sat at the kitchen table while I placed it in front of him.
For several minutes, neither of us said much.
Then his eyes moved toward the hallway.
"Have you been in Jack's room?"
"Not much."
He nodded.
"I haven't either."
I sat across from him.
"You can go in whenever you want."
He looked down at the sandwich.
"I don't know if I should."
That sentence stayed with me.
Theo had spent years treating our house as a place where he belonged.
Now he was asking permission to enter a room where he had once spent whole afternoons.
"You don't need to ask me that," I said.
He nodded again.
But he didn't move toward the hallway.
We talked about ordinary things instead.
His classes.
His family.
The arrangements his parents had made after the funeral.
He didn't mention the dress.
Neither did I.
I was afraid that bringing it up would make him feel he had to explain himself again.
He had already done that once, in front of a room full of people.
He shouldn't have needed to do it a second time.
Before he left, he stood near the front door and looked at me.
"I'm glad you let me finish the speech."
I felt a knot form in my throat.
"I should never have made you feel you might not be allowed to."
He looked surprised.
Then he gave me a small smile.
"Jack would have been mad if you had."
I laughed quietly.
"Yes. He probably would."
Theo left a few minutes later.
After the door closed, I stood in the hallway and thought about how much I had nearly misunderstood.
I had assumed that because Theo was young, he couldn't possibly understand what Jack had been facing.
I had been wrong.
He had understood enough to know that my son was sometimes afraid.
He had understood enough to listen without trying to make every difficult conversation disappear.
And he had understood enough to keep a promise that had frightened him long before he ever wore the dress.
I didn't know how to repay him for that.
I wasn't sure there was a way.
Over the next several weeks, Theo visited from time to time.
Sometimes he stayed for dinner.
Sometimes he came by for only a few minutes.
We didn't always talk about Jack.
Occasionally, that was a relief.
We could discuss a class he was taking or something that had happened with his parents.
We could laugh about an ordinary inconvenience.
For a little while, we could be people having a conversation instead of parents and friends trying to understand a terrible loss.
Then Jack would come up in conversation, and everything would change.
One afternoon, Theo mentioned a movie he had watched.
I asked whether it was any good.
He made a face.
"Jack would have loved it."
I smiled.
"That doesn't tell me whether it was good."
Theo laughed.
"You're right. It was awful."
We both laughed harder than the joke deserved.
Then we became quiet.
It was strange how quickly happiness could turn into sadness.
But I began to accept that the two could sit together.
We didn't have to stop laughing because Jack was gone.
And we didn't have to stop missing him because we had laughed.
I started keeping that in mind.
The red dress came up again when Theo visited with his sister.
Emma had insisted on accompanying him that afternoon.
She carried a small bag and looked slightly embarrassed when I welcomed her into the kitchen.
"I wanted to apologize," she said.
I looked at her.
"For what?"
She glanced at Theo.
"For telling him the dress was a ridiculous idea."
Theo groaned.
"Emma, you don't have to do that."
She ignored him.
"I thought it would upset people. I thought he should just wear something normal and say what he needed to say."
She looked at me.
"I didn't understand why it mattered so much to him."
I reached across the table and touched her hand.
"You were trying to help him."
"Maybe. But I didn't listen very well."
I understood that feeling.
I had done something similar.
We all had.
We had seen the dress and immediately decided what it meant.
None of us had stopped to consider that there might be a reason we didn't know.
Emma opened the bag.
Inside was the dress.
The same bright red fabric that had filled the chapel with whispers.
"I told Theo he could keep it," she said. "I didn't want him to feel he had to return it."
Theo looked uncomfortable.
"I wasn't planning to throw it away."
"I know," Emma replied. "That's why I'm letting you keep it."
He shook his head, smiling.
They argued about it for a few minutes, and I found myself watching them with affection.
They were siblings.
They disagreed.
They worried about each other.
And sometimes they expressed their concern in ways that sounded more critical than they intended.
I knew something about that.
Before they left, Emma folded the dress carefully and handed it back to Theo.
He accepted it without making a joke.
For a moment, I thought about asking him whether he planned to keep it forever.
Then I decided it wasn't my question to ask.
The dress belonged to him now.
So did the promise.
And Jack's memory belonged to all of us.
Source: kaylestore.net
Click here to continue reading: PART 6: I Had Spent Months Protecting Jack From My Fear, Until I Realized He Had Been Protecting Me From His
I Thought My Son’s Best Friend Had Crossed a Line Until I Saw What He Was Carrying Into the Chapel
Part 5 of 12
