And as I held him, something extraordinary was happening in the auditorium around us.

I became aware of it slowly, through my tears: the change in the quality of the air, the shift in the sound of the room.

The whispers had completely stopped.

The silence that had fallen over the gymnasium was not the uncomfortable quiet of a crowd that does not know how to react.

It was something else entirely, something deeper: a reverent, weighted stillness, the hush that falls over people in the presence of something sacred.

Because the story had traveled.