There’s something profoundly disorienting about watching people cry for someone you loved quietly.
They hold you just a little too long, call you sweetheart as if they’ve known you your whole life, and speak in that gentle tone reserved for those they think are too fragile to bear grief.
I lost my stepdad, Michael, five days ago. Pancreatic cancer took him quickly and cruelly. At 78, he was gone like smoke.
“You were everything to him, Clover,” someone whispered, gripping my hand as though I might drift away.
