The hardest part was never the funeral.
It was the quiet that came after. The chair no one sits in anymore. Reaching for the phone to tell them something, then remembering. The way grief doesn't arrive all at once — it arrives every evening, when the house goes still and you realize there is nothing left to hold.
People send flowers. They say the kind, careful things. And then they go back to their lives, and you are left with the one thing nobody warns you about: how badly you ache for something physical. Something that still feels like them. A sweater that hasn't lost their smell. A voicemail you can't bring yourself to delete.
"I just wanted to feel close to her one more time."
That's what so many families tell us. Not a monument. Not a grand gesture. Just something warm they can pull around their shoulders and feel — even for a moment — like they're being held again.