And my daughter walked up to him, slowly, and put her small hands on both his cheeks, and leaned in close to his nose, and took a breath, and listened, for one long second, the way she had listened in the casket.

And then she smiled.

“Okay,” she said.

“Now you can.” And Mark pulled her into his arms and held her against his chest, tears streaming down his face, the two of them wrapped together in the doorway of a home that had very nearly become a house of mourning and had, because of her, become instead a house where her father had come home.

That small ritual in the doorway, my daughter putting her hands on her father’s cheeks and leaning in to listen for his breath before she would let herself hug him, is a thing I have never told anyone the full meaning of, because it is almost too tender to speak aloud.