My head snapped toward him.
Theo looked at me.
“Mrs. Harris, I’m sorry. I should’ve told you before today. I just… I couldn’t.”
He unfolded the paper.
“It says, ‘Theo, if you’re reading this because I died, first of all, that’s embarrassing for me.’”
A ripple of laughter passed through the room.
Real laughter.
Painful, but real.
That sounded exactly like Jack.
Theo kept reading.
“‘Second, you promised. Red dress. Don’t chicken out just because my relatives are judgmental.’”
Daniel made a sound beside me that was half sob, half laugh.
Theo looked toward Daniel’s brother.
A few people laughed harder.
Then Theo’s face changed.
“‘Third, don’t let my funeral be the first time you lie to me just because I’m not there to call you out.’”
Theo lowered the paper.
“I almost didn’t come.”
I looked at him.
He said, “My dad told me not to wear it. My mom said people would misunderstand. My sister told me I was insane.”
Then he glanced down.
“But she gave me the dress anyway.”
A young woman near the back covered her mouth.
Theo’s sister.
I’d barely noticed her.
Theo looked at me.
“I didn’t want to upset you.”
That broke me.
Because he’d been sitting ten feet away, terrified of hurting us, while I’d been wondering whether to have him removed.
I stood.
Daniel looked at me.
I walked toward Theo.
He froze.
For one horrible second, I think he thought I was coming to take him away from the microphone.
Instead, I hugged him.
He was taller than me now.
When had that happened?
I’d known this boy since he had missing teeth.
Now he folded into me and started sobbing.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“No.”
“I should’ve told you.”
“No.”
“I didn’t mean to make today worse.”
“You didn’t.”
I held the back of his head.
“Finish it.”
He pulled away.
“Are you sure?”
“Finish what Jack asked you to say.”
I returned to my seat.
Daniel was crying openly now.
Theo stood at the microphone again.
He looked at the paper.
Then he folded it.
“I actually wrote a eulogy.”
He lifted several pages from the podium.
“Seven pages.”
A voice from Jack’s school friends said, “Jeez, Theo.”
Theo laughed.
“Exactly. Jack would’ve hated it.”
He put the pages aside.
“So I’m not reading it.”
And instead he talked.
Not about cancer.
Not mostly.
He talked about the time they were 12 and accidentally broke our garage window with a hockey puck, then spent three hours inventing increasingly stupid explanations.
They eventually blamed a bird.
Daniel had asked, “What kind of bird carries a hockey puck?”
Jack answered, “A strong one.”
Theo told everyone about Jack cheating at Monopoly and insisting it wasn’t cheating because “the bank has insurance.”
He talked about the first day of high school, when Theo had a panic attack in the bathroom, and Jack sat on the floor outside the stall pretending they were skipping class intentionally.
Then Theo got quieter.
“When Jack got sick, everybody started calling him brave.”
He looked down.
“He hated that.”
I knew that.
Jack once told me, “Mom, if one more adult tells me I’m brave while putting a needle in me, I’m going to lose it.”
Theo continued.
“He said being sick wasn’t brave. It was just happening to him.”
Theo’s hands tightened around the podium.
“But I think there was one thing he was brave about.”
He looked at us.
“He knew before most of us were willing to know.”
I closed my eyes.
“He knew he might die.”
The words hurt even though we’d already lost him.
“And somehow he still spent half his time trying to make everybody else less afraid.”
Theo touched the dress.
“This wasn’t Jack making fun of me.”
He smiled.
“Okay. It was partly Jack making fun of me.”
More laughter.
“But mostly I think he wanted one last thing he could control.”
That landed harder than anything else.
Cancer had taken control away from Jack piece by piece.
His school. His hair. His appetite. His privacy. His plans.
Eventually, his ability to walk without help.
But he had chosen this.
A red dress.
A promise.
A joke waiting six months for its punch line.
Theo finished, “So this is for Jack.”
He looked down at himself.
“I hate it.”
His sister called from the back, “You look great!”
The room erupted.
Even I laughed.
Theo shook his head.
“Thank you, Emma.”
Then he looked at the coffin one final time.
“You win, idiot.”
And stepped away.
After the service, everyone wanted to talk to Theo.
That was almost funny considering how many of them had stared when he entered.
Daniel’s brother was first.
He walked over awkwardly.
“Theo.”
Theo looked nervous.
My brother-in-law cleared his throat.
“I owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
“I was judging you before you even sat down.”
Theo shrugged.
“It’s okay.”
“No.”
He looked toward Jack’s coffin.
“It isn’t.”
Then he held out his hand.
Theo shook it.
Others followed.
Some hugged him.
Some told him Jack would have loved it.
One elderly aunt said, “I still don’t understand boys today, but your speech was beautiful.”
Theo said, “Honestly, that’s fair.”
For the first time all day, I saw something close to the Theo I knew.
