That was answer enough.
“Yes,” he finally said.
I started crying again.
Theo put an arm around me.
“He wasn’t scared all the time.”
“Thank you for not lying.”
He nodded.
“I promised him that too.”
The red dress became one of the things people remembered about Jack’s funeral.
For a while, that bothered me.
I didn’t want my son’s life reduced to some strange story people told about a boy in a dress.
But eventually, I understood why people remembered it.
The dress wasn’t really about Theo.
It wasn’t even about the joke.
It was proof that Jack had still been Jack when death was close enough for him to see.
Sarcastic. Controlling. Funny. Annoying.
Thinking six months ahead about how to make his best friend uncomfortable.
Theo gave the dress back to Emma the next day.
She refused to take it.
She told him, “Absolutely not. It has funeral energy now.”
So he kept it.
Years have passed.
Theo is 23 now.
He graduated from college last spring.
Daniel and I went.
We sat beside his mother.
Afterward, Theo came over in his cap and gown and hugged us both.
Then he whispered, “I considered wearing red.”
Daniel said, “Don’t push your luck.”
Theo laughed.
For graduation, we gave him one of Jack’s watches.
Nothing expensive.
Just the black one Jack wore almost every day before treatment made his wrists too thin.
Theo stared at it for a long time. “I can’t take this.”
I closed his hand around it.
“Yes, you can.”
He cried.
So did I.
We do that less now.
But grief doesn’t leave.
It changes shape.
There are days when Jack feels 18 years away.
Then I hear one of his stupid phrases in my head, and he’s right beside me again.
I still think about the moment Theo entered the funeral.
