Theo stood behind the microphone, staring at the coffin.
For a moment, I thought he had forgotten what he wanted to say.
Then he took a breath.
"Jack and I talked about a lot of things when we were alone."
His voice was quiet.
"Most of them were stupid."
A few people smiled through their tears.
Theo looked down.
"We argued about movies. We argued about music. We argued about things that didn't matter at all."
He paused.
"But there were things we couldn't joke about."
I felt Daniel shift beside me.
Theo continued.
"When Jack got sick, everybody started treating him differently."
He glanced toward us.
"I don't mean that anybody was trying to hurt him. I know you were all trying to help."
My eyes filled.
He wasn't blaming us.
That almost made it harder to listen.
"But sometimes, when everybody loves you and everybody is worried about you, it's hard to say what you're really thinking."
Theo rubbed his thumb against the edge of the lectern.
"Jack didn't want to make anybody feel worse."
I remembered the times my son had smiled at me when I asked whether he was afraid.
He always told me he was fine.
I had wanted to believe him.
Theo lowered his head.
"Six months before he died, we were in his room. He was having a bad day."
I remembered those days.
Jack had grown tired of people asking whether he needed anything.
He had grown tired of being told he was brave.
He had grown tired of hearing that tomorrow might be better.
Sometimes, he wanted everybody to stop trying to make him feel better.
I hadn't always understood that.
Theo had.
"We weren't watching anything that afternoon," he said. "We were just sitting there."
He gave a small, sad smile.
"Jack had his drink on the table, and I was supposed to be doing homework."
A faint sound escaped someone in the audience.
It might have been a laugh.
It might have been a sob.
Theo swallowed.
"He looked at me and asked what I would do if I could have one day when nobody expected anything from me."
I stared at the lectern.
That sounded like Jack.
Not because I had heard him ask that question before, but because I could imagine the way he would have said it.
Quietly.
As if he were asking about the weather.
"What did you tell him?" someone whispered.
Theo heard it.
He lifted his head.
"I told him I would sleep until noon and eat whatever I wanted."
A few people smiled.
"I told him I'd turn off my phone and refuse to speak to anybody."
His smile faded.
"Then Jack said he didn't mean a normal day off."
Theo's fingers tightened around the lectern.
"He meant a day when he didn't have to be the sick kid."
I pressed my hand over my mouth.
Daniel stared straight ahead.
Theo took a moment before continuing.
"He said he wanted to do something without everybody looking at him to see whether he was tired. He wanted to make a choice without somebody worrying about whether it was good for him."
I could hear my own breathing.
I remembered the medicines lined up on the counter.
The appointment cards.
The notes I kept beside Jack's bed.
The way I watched him eat, sleep, walk, and talk, always measuring his energy against what I knew about his condition.
I had been trying to keep him safe.
I hadn't understood how much of his life had begun to feel like something other people managed.
Theo looked toward the coffin.
"I told him he could do whatever he wanted."
He shook his head.
"That was easy for me to say. I wasn't the one living in his body."
The chapel remained silent.
"He told me that he knew you loved him."
Theo glanced at Daniel and me.
"He said he knew how hard you were trying."
My tears slipped down before I could wipe them away.
"But he also said he didn't know how to tell you that sometimes he wanted to be treated like Jack again."
There it was.
Not an accusation.
Not a complaint about our love.
Just a boy trying to explain something he hadn't known how to say to his parents.
Theo drew a shaky breath.
"He said he missed being able to do things without everybody getting scared."
Daniel lowered his eyes.
I wanted to reach for him, but I couldn't move.
Theo looked at his hands.
"I told Jack that I understood."
He paused.
"Then he said he wanted to ask me for something."
My heart began beating harder.
I knew we were approaching the promise.
I still didn't know what it was.
Theo looked out at the mourners.
"He made me promise that I wouldn't tell you about our conversation until today."
The words settled over the chapel.
Daniel turned toward me.
I could see the question in his face.
Why hadn't we known?
Why had our son chosen to tell Theo something he couldn't tell us?
I had no answer.
Theo wiped his cheeks.
"Jack told me I could say what I needed to say after he was gone."
He looked at the coffin.
"He wanted me to be honest about something he'd been keeping to himself."
I leaned forward.
"What was it?" I whispered, though I knew he couldn't hear me.
Theo seemed to hear the question anyway.
He took a long breath.
"He said he wanted me to wear a dress to his funeral."
For a second, the words made no sense.
I stared at him.
Daniel's head lifted.
Somewhere behind us, a chair creaked.
Theo's eyes filled again.
"He asked me to wear something bright. He said he didn't want me standing up here looking like everybody else."
He looked down at the red fabric.
"He wanted red."
I felt the air leave my lungs.
The dress.
The one thing I had spent the morning judging.
The one thing that had made Daniel want to stand up and ask Theo to leave.
Jack had asked for it.
My son had chosen it.
Theo had not come to make a scene.
He had come to keep a promise.
I turned toward Daniel.
His face had gone pale.
He stared at Theo as if he were seeing him for the first time.
Theo pressed his lips together.
"I told him I didn't know if I could do it."
His voice trembled.
"I told him people would misunderstand."
A few mourners nodded, their faces wet with tears.
Theo gave a short, broken laugh.
"Jack said people misunderstood us all the time anyway."
That sounded like my son too.
He had never been especially interested in making himself easier for other people to understand.
When he cared about someone, he cared.
When he found something funny, he laughed.
And when he thought something was unfair, he had a way of asking a question that made everyone else uncomfortable.
Theo glanced toward the coffin.
"He said he didn't want the day to be only about how sad everybody was."
He stopped speaking.
His shoulders began to shake.
I wanted to get up.
I wanted to go to the front of the chapel and put my arms around him.
But I stayed where I was, listening.
"He said he wanted us to remember that he was still Jack."
Theo looked directly at us.
"Your Jack."
Daniel bowed his head.
I began to cry harder.
"He didn't want you to think of him only as the boy who got sick. He wanted you to remember the boy who laughed too loudly, who argued over nothing, who could be stubborn about the smallest things."
A few people laughed softly through their tears.
Theo's face crumpled.
"He wanted one thing at his funeral that would make people ask a question."
He looked down at the dress.
"And he wanted me to answer it."
I understood then why he had come alone and sat near the aisle.
He had known people would stare.
He had known Daniel might be angry.
He had known I might look at him and wonder whether he had lost his mind.
He had come anyway.
Because Jack had asked him.
Because a promise made in a quiet bedroom had mattered more to him than the opinions of a chapel full of people.
Theo took a breath that seemed to hurt.
"I told him I would do it."
Then he looked at us again.
"And I meant it."
Click here to continue reading: PART 6: The Red Dress Was Never Meant to Hurt Us, but Jack Had Known We Would Need Help Understanding Why
The Boy We Called Family Walked Into My Son’s Funeral Wearing the One Color Nobody Expected to See
Part 5 of 12
