I have to stop again.
"He told me once that the people we love never really leave us. That they become part of how we see the world. Part of how we make decisions. Part of the voice in our heads that tells us to be brave when we're terrified, to be kind when we're angry, to keep going when we want to give up."
My voice cracks. I don't try to hide it.
"And he was right. Because Alfie's still here. In every book I pick up and hear his voice recommending. In every time I choose patience over anger. In every moment I remember that being good isn't about being perfect—it's about trying. It’s about doing the hard thing because it's the right thing."
I look out at the faces gathered here—people whose lives Alfie touched in ways big and small. People who are here because one man decided that kindness mattered more than anything else.
"Alfie taught me that love doesn't end when someone dies. It just changes form. Becomes memory. Becomes the way we live our lives because they lived theirs. Becomes the choice to be better because they showed us what better looked like."
I look at the casket, at the flowers, at the physical end of a life that was anything but small.
"Alfie told me to stop running from my story. To stop being afraid of the things that mattered most. To be brave enough to want what I wanted, even if wanting it was terrifying."
My voice drops, becomes something softer.
"I'm still learning how to do that. But I'm trying?—"
The chapel doors creak open.
It's a small sound—wood on old hinges, the kind that happens a dozen times during any service—but it cuts through everything.I glance up reflexively, the way everyone does when someone arrives late.
And my entire world detonates.
Because standing in the doorway, backlit by afternoon sun that turns her into something holy and impossible, is Nora.
She's wearing a dark dress that moves with her as she hesitates in the entrance. Like she wasn't sure she'd actually walk through. For a second she looks exactly like herself and nothing like the version I've carried in my head for seven years.
Better. She looks better.
Real in a way memory can't quite capture.
Our eyes meet.
And everything just stops.
My heart forgets its rhythm. My lungs forget how to pull air. Every single coherent thought I've ever had just evaporates into nothing.
Years of distance obliterated in a single glance.
It's like touching a live wire. Like the split second before a car crash when time slows down and you see everything with perfect, terrible clarity. Like falling and flying at the same time, gravity losing all meaning because the only force that matters is the pull between us.
Seven years.
Seven years and one look from her still has the power to undo me completely.
My hands grip the sides of the podium. The wood is solid, real, the only thing keeping me upright.
My knees weaken and my vision tunnels.
The words I was about to say disappear. The eulogy I was holding together with sheer will crumbles into nothing. My brain goes blank—completely, devastatingly blank—like someone reached in and pulled the plug on every function that makes me capable of speech.
She's looking at me the same way.
Eyes wide, lips slightly parted, frozen in the doorway likeshe's forgotten how to move forward. Like seeing me has stolen every bit of air from her lungs too.
Her face is pale. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, like she's trying to remember how breathing works. Every mile I've put between us, every hour of therapy, every morning I woke up and convinced myself I was over this—all of it disintegrates in the space of a heartbeat.
