After lunch, people began gathering in the kitchen.
Someone poured more tea.
Someone else opened the bag of biscuits Theo had brought.
Daniel stood at the counter cutting apples, though nobody had asked him to.
I suspected he needed something to do with his hands.
I did, too.
Every so often, I looked toward the photograph on the table.
It had become a place my eyes returned to whenever the conversation grew quiet.
Theo noticed me looking at it.
"Jack hated having his picture taken," he said.
"Only when he knew someone was taking it."
"That's true."
"He could stand in front of a camera and make the strangest face."
Theo smiled.
"He did that with me once. I was trying to take a picture of something important, and he put his face right in front of the lens."
"What were you trying to photograph?"
"A bird."
I laughed.
"That sounds about right."
Theo leaned against the counter.
"He said the bird wasn't going anywhere, but his face was more interesting."
"He always thought he was more interesting than he was."
Theo laughed again.
Then he became thoughtful.
"He was interesting, though."
I looked at him.
"I know."
The words came out more quickly than I expected.
For a long time, I had been afraid that admitting I had not understood everything about Jack meant admitting I had failed him.
I was beginning to see the difference.
I had known him as his mother.
Theo had known him in another part of his life.
His friends knew him in other ways.
Nobody had possessed the whole of him.
That did not make any of us less important.
It only meant there had been more to love than any one person could hold.
A woman who had known Jack through work asked Theo about a time they had all gone out for dinner.
Theo told her about Jack ordering a meal and then spending half the evening eating everyone else's food.
"He always said he was just checking whether they had ordered something better."
Daniel turned from the counter.
"That is exactly what he used to do at home."
"He did it at my place, too," Theo said. "He'd ask for one bite, and then somehow the plate would be half empty."
I looked down at the apple slices.
Jack had done that at our table for years.
I had scolded him for it, laughed about it, and sometimes pushed my plate toward him when he asked.
It was a small memory.
It was also a memory that made him feel close enough to reach.
Later, when the others moved into the living room, Theo stayed behind to help me clear the cups.
"You don't have to do that," I told him.
"I know."
He picked up two mugs anyway.
I let him.
We carried them to the sink and stood side by side.
For a moment, I wanted to ask him questions.
I wanted to know how often he and Jack had seen each other, what they had talked about, and which parts of Jack's life he had understood better than I had.
The questions rose so quickly that I could almost hear them lining up.
Then I remembered what Theo had told me about Jack.
Sometimes he had needed someone to listen before trying to fix anything.
I wondered whether I was about to turn Theo's memories into something I could use to settle my own uncertainty.
So I asked something else.
"What do you miss most about him?"
Theo rested a mug on the counter.
He thought for a while.
"His messages."
"His messages?"
"He'd send me something ridiculous in the middle of the day. A picture of a crooked sign, or a dog sitting in a shopping cart, or a sentence he'd overheard that made no sense."
I smiled.
"He used to send me pictures of things he thought I'd like."
"Did he?"
"Usually flowers. Sometimes a tree that looked like it was growing sideways."
Theo looked at me.
"He sent me a picture of a tree like that once."
"Perhaps it was the same tree."
"Maybe."
We stood quietly.
Then Theo said, "He remembered little things about people."
I nodded.
"He did."
"He remembered what made them laugh. What they didn't like. Which subjects they avoided when they were having a hard day."
I turned on the tap.
The water ran over the cups, and I watched it disappear down the drain.
"I wish I'd asked him more questions," I said.
Theo did not rush to comfort me.
He did not tell me I had done everything right.
He simply stood beside me.
After a while, he said, "I think he knew you loved him."
I swallowed.
"I hope so."
"He talked about you."
I kept washing the cups.
"What did he say?"
Theo paused.
"He said you always tried to help. Sometimes he needed advice, and sometimes he just wanted to tell you something without having to decide what to do about it."
I turned off the tap.
The kitchen became quiet except for the refrigerator.
"I did that," I said. "I'd hear a problem and start looking for a solution before he'd finished telling me about it."
"Most people do that sometimes."
"But he might have stopped telling me things."
Theo looked at me carefully.
"I can't tell you everything he thought. I wouldn't want to pretend I could."
I appreciated that.
He did not use Jack's absence to make himself the person with all the answers.
"But I don't think he stopped loving you," Theo added.
I leaned against the counter.
For years, I had thought being a good mother meant making sure Jack had somewhere to turn when things went wrong.
I had not always considered that he might need somewhere to speak when nothing was wrong at all.
I had made room for his troubles.
I was less certain I had made room for his uncertainty.
"I wish I could do it differently now," I said.
Theo nodded.
"I know."
There was nothing else he needed to say.
We returned to the living room with the clean cups.
A few people had gathered around Jack's notebook.
It lay open on the table, its pages filled with short notes and small plans.
Nobody was reading it aloud.
They were looking at the handwriting and pointing out the places where Jack had crossed out a word or drawn an arrow.
Daniel stood beside the notebook.
"He never finished anything without changing it three times," he said.
"Four," Theo replied.
Daniel smiled.
"You're right. Four."
Theo moved closer to the table.
I watched him look at the notebook.
His fingers rested on the edge of the page, careful not to cover the words.
"Is there something in there you wanted to show us?" I asked.
He shook his head.
"Not especially. I just like seeing it here."
"Then it can stay here."
He looked at me.
"Are you sure?"
"Of course."
I understood why he had asked.
The notebook belonged to Jack, but it also held pieces of a life Theo had shared with him.
I did not need to take it away from him to prove that Jack had been my son.
Nor did Theo need to keep it to prove that Jack had mattered to him.
We could look at the same pages without fighting over what they meant.
One of Jack's friends sat down beside Theo and asked about a note in the margin.
Theo read it, smiled, and explained the joke.
The friend laughed so hard that she had to put the notebook down.
Daniel laughed with her.
I sat on the arm of the sofa and listened.
There were things about Jack I would never know.
There were conversations that had happened when I was not in the room.
There were moments that belonged to other people.
At first, that thought had felt like a door closing.
Now it felt more like a house with rooms I had not visited.
I could be glad those rooms existed.
I could be grateful that someone had been there with him.
And I could stop treating every unknown thing as proof that I had been left outside.
As the afternoon went on, people began sharing stories they had never thought to tell us before.
One remembered Jack helping a stranger change a tire in the rain.
Another remembered him bringing extra food to work because he knew a colleague had been struggling.
Someone else recalled a phone call that had lasted nearly two hours because Jack had refused to hang up while his friend was upset.
I listened to every story.
Some made me proud.
Some made me laugh.
A few made me wish I had known sooner.
But I did not interrupt to explain what Jack had been like at home.
I did not try to fit each memory into the picture I already carried.
I let the stories sit beside one another.
When a guest asked whether Jack had always been so good at noticing when someone was unhappy, Theo glanced at me.
"He had to learn it," he said. "He wasn't perfect at it."
I was grateful for that answer.
Jack did not need to become a saint for his life to matter.
He had made mistakes.
He had sometimes been impatient.
He could be stubborn, careless, and entirely convinced that his way was the only sensible way.
He could also be gentle.
He could listen.
He could change his mind.
All of those things belonged in the same memory.
Toward the end of the afternoon, I found myself beside Theo again.
He was holding the photograph from the kitchen table.
"Would you like to keep a copy?" I asked.
He looked surprised.
"I'd like that."
"I can have one made."
"Thank you."
I took the photograph from him and examined it.
The two of them were standing close together, with the same easy expression I had noticed before.
There was no explanation written on the back.
There did not need to be.
"I used to think I needed to know everything about Jack to understand him," I said.
Theo waited.
"I don't think that anymore."
He looked at the photograph.
"I don't think anybody knew everything about him."
I smiled sadly.
"No. I suppose they didn't."
We returned the picture to the table.
It stood beside the blue plates and the empty mug that had belonged to Jack.
The room was beginning to empty.
People hugged us before leaving.
Some promised to call.
Some simply said they were glad they had come.
When the last guest had gone, Daniel closed the front door and stood with his hand on the handle.
For a moment, none of us moved.
Then he turned toward Theo.
"I'm glad you came."
Theo nodded.
"I'm glad I came, too."
Daniel glanced at the photograph.
"I learned things about Jack today."
"So did I," I said.
Theo looked at us both.
"Me too."
We stood in the quiet house, three people carrying different memories of the same person.
There was no single story that could hold all of them.
There was only the work of listening.
And for once, none of us seemed in a hurry to finish.
Click here to continue reading: PART 19: When the House Grew Quiet Again, I Finally Understood That Grief Was Not a Question Anyone Could Answer for Me
The Funeral Had Barely Begun When the Person I Trusted Least to Surprise Me Walked Through the Chapel Doors
Part 18 of 20
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