It was never a question.
By the time they were twelve, we had stopped calling our spare bedroom the spare bedroom.
It was Theo’s room.
I bought him a toothbrush. I kept his favorite cereal in the pantry. I learned that he hated mushrooms and that he would eat almost anything if it came with enough cheese.
When Theo’s parents fought, he slept at our house.
When Jack needed a friend, Theo was there.
And when cancer entered our lives, Theo became something I still struggle to describe.
He became the person who stayed.
Jack’s diagnosis came fourteen months before the funeral.
At first, the doctors thought his exhaustion and unexplained pain might be caused by something relatively minor. Then came the tests, the specialists, and the conversations that changed the meaning of every word we heard.
Cancer.
I remember Daniel asking the doctor to repeat himself.
I remember looking at Jack, expecting him to cry.
