The list of places Jack wanted to visit stayed on the shelf for several weeks.
I couldn't bring myself to put it away with the other papers.
Every time I passed the box, I remembered the little airplane he had drawn beside one of the destinations.
He had always been good at imagining things.
Even when he was younger, he could turn an ordinary afternoon into a plan for something much bigger.
A trip across the country.
A weekend at the beach.
A movie marathon that would somehow last three days.
He had never been very good at considering the practical details.
That was usually where Theo came in.
Theo would ask how they planned to pay for the trip, where they intended to sleep, or whether Jack had remembered that neither of them could drive yet.
Jack would dismiss every concern.
"We'll figure it out."
He said it so confidently that I sometimes wondered whether he believed the details would arrange themselves if he ignored them long enough.
I used to find that habit exhausting.
Now I missed it.
One afternoon, I took the list out of the box and laid it on the kitchen table.
Daniel found me looking at it when he came home.
"What are you doing?"
I turned the paper toward him.
"Remembering."
He pulled out a chair and sat beside me.
For a while, he studied the places Jack had written down.
Then he pointed to one.
"He mentioned this one last summer."
I nodded.
"He wanted to go after he finished treatment."
Daniel traced the edge of the paper with one finger.
"He really believed he would."
"I think he did."
My husband looked at me.
"Do you?"
I took a moment before answering.
"Yes. I think he believed he could recover, and he also knew he might not."
Daniel looked back at the list.
That was a difficult thing to accept.
For a long time, I had imagined hope and fear as opposites.
If Jack was making plans, I assumed he must have been pushing the possibility of death out of his mind.
If he was frightened, I assumed he must have stopped believing he would get better.
But Theo had told me that Jack experienced both.
He wanted to live.
He wanted college, travel, ordinary days, and all the things he had expected to do.
He also understood that his illness might prevent him from having them.
Those truths had existed together.
I had simply not been ready to see them.
Daniel folded the paper along its old crease.
"I wish he'd told us more."
I knew what he meant.
We had wanted Jack to be honest with us, but we had also worked hard to reassure him whenever he looked frightened.
We had told him about treatments that might help.
We had repeated what the doctors had said about the options available.
We had tried to keep our voices steady.
Perhaps he had learned to protect us in return.
I could not know exactly what he had thought.
But I could understand why he might have kept some of his fears between himself and Theo.
I looked at my husband.
"He probably didn't want us to worry more than we already did."
Daniel rubbed his face.
"I hate that he had to think about our feelings when he was the one who was sick."
"So do I."
We sat together until the kettle began to whistle.
Neither of us moved immediately.
Then Daniel stood to turn it off.
It was a small interruption, but I was grateful for it.
We couldn't spend every afternoon looking backward.
At least, I couldn't.
Not if I wanted to keep living in the house where Jack had grown up.
That evening, I called Theo.
I asked whether he would come over for dinner sometime the following week.
He said he would.
I told him we didn't need a special occasion.
He laughed.
"Good. I don't think I'm ready for another funeral."
The joke caught me off guard.
Then I laughed too.
It wasn't because the subject had stopped hurting.
It was because I could hear Jack in the way Theo had said it.
We arranged a day.
When I hung up, I stood beside the telephone for a moment.
I had been afraid that laughing about Jack would make his death seem less important.
Instead, I was beginning to understand that laughter was one of the ways he remained part of our lives.
The following week, Theo arrived for dinner.
He brought nothing with him except the movie list he had found in Jack's room.
He placed it on the table beside his plate.
"I thought we should choose one."
Daniel looked at the paper.
"How many are on there?"
"Enough to make this a bad idea."
I smiled.
"Then we'll start with one."
Theo read the titles aloud.
Some were horror films Jack had watched repeatedly.
Others were movies I had never heard of.
One title had a question mark beside it.
Theo pointed at that one.
"Jack said this was supposed to be terrible."
"Then why did he put it on the list?" Daniel asked.
"Because he wanted to see whether I was right."
I shook my head.
"He couldn't let you have an opinion without challenging it."
"Not once."
We chose a film and watched it after dinner.
It was dreadful.
The acting was stiff, the story made little sense, and the ending seemed to have been written by someone who had run out of ideas.
Theo sat on the couch with his arms folded.
Halfway through, he looked at me.
"Jack would've loved this."
I laughed.
"He would have defended it for the rest of his life."
"He would've made us watch it again."
Daniel shook his head.
"Not in my house."
Theo grinned.
"That's what you said last time."
We watched until the credits rolled.
Nobody hurried to turn the television off.
The room was quiet, but it wasn't empty.
I looked at the movie list on the coffee table.
For the first time, it didn't feel like a record of everything Jack had missed.
It felt like an invitation to remember the things he had enjoyed.
When Theo left that night, he hugged us both.
"Thanks for dinner."
I held him for an extra moment.
"Come back soon."
He nodded.
"I will."
After he had gone, Daniel collected the plates.
I put the movie list back in the box, but I left the lid open.
The following morning, I moved the box to a shelf in the living room.
I wanted it somewhere I could reach without having to make a decision about whether I was strong enough to look inside.
That was the first change.
Not a large one.
Not something anyone else would have noticed.
But I no longer treated every memory of Jack as something I needed to prepare myself for.
Some memories still hurt too much.
Others made me smile.
I was learning to let them arrive without deciding what they were allowed to do to me.
Click here to continue reading: PART 10: At Theo’s Graduation, I Saw the Boy Who Had Kept Jack’s Promise Becoming the Man My Son Had Expected Him to Be
I Thought My Son’s Best Friend Had Chosen the Worst Possible Day to Make Himself the Center of Attention
Part 9 of 12
