At my husband’s funeral, my best friend cried harder than I did. Back then, I thought it was simply the compassion of someone who had been my friend for forty years. Until six weeks after the funeral, when a taped shoebox in his closet made me understand who those tears had really been for…

At my husband’s funeral, my best friend cried more than I did. I noticed it the way you notice something that does not fit in a room. Not loud.

Not obvious. Just wrong in a way you cannot name right away. Gloria was sitting in the third row, which was already strange, because I had asked her to sit with me in the front.

I had saved a place for her beside Renee, close enough that I could have reached over and taken her hand if the service got too heavy. She told me, before the ushers began guiding people down the aisle, that she needed space to breathe. I did not question it.

Gloria had always been particular about things like that. After forty years of knowing her, I had learned which of her particularities to question and which ones to let pass. She did not like sitting with her back to a door.