Your love will challenge them, and cajole them, and never leave them be, and if, at some point, you see them heading in a direction that will hurt them, or shrink them, you will push them out of harm’s way, even if they themselves can’t yet see the love in what you’re doing. If you love someone, you do for them what is right for them, not necessarily what they want. You are demanding, your expectations are the highest of the high.

I did ache when I said goodbye to the friends I’d made. I ached when I said goodbye to my grandparents, to my cousins, to my aunts, to my mother. I ached for lasting connection, for a place where rejection was not inevitable. No matter how many times I stood on bare floors, surrounded by blank walls, telling myself I belonged everywhere and to everyone, emptied houses never stopped feeling like ruin. Failing to fully belong in my father’s family, and my mother’s, never stopped feeling like disgrace.

OK, we’ll tell her you dug the grave.’ It’s the truth – stretched, but still true. Besides, what would be left of love without truth stretched beyond its limits, without those better versions of ourselves that we present as the only ones that exist?

The wailing will start again and as you all watch the grave-diggers begin to fill up the grave with earth, even the men will become tearful. Couples who have not spoken to each other in weeks will hold hands. I was too shocked to cry at my father’s funeral, but you had tears in your eyes even though you did not let one of them fall.

Staying with the feeling is key,” I declare. “Most people go straight to what is wrong with them rather than staying with the feeling.” David’s eyes fill with tears. I can see that he is following my logic. “I’d like to believe it,” he says quietly.