“It won’t bother you then?” I asked after a moment.

“What?”

“The money.”

He looked right into my eyes as he said, “Is it going to bother me that you’re rich? No. I always wondered what it would be like to have a sugar mama.”

Grief was the final way we had to tell our loved ones that they’d impacted our lives. That we missed them so, so much. And there was nothing wrong with me mourning my mom for the rest of mine, even as I carried her love and her life in my heart. I had to live, but I could also remember along the way.

The people we lose take a part of us with them… but they leave a part of themselves with us too.

He rarely used the L-word but he didn’t need to. I knew how he felt like I knew my own name.

“I’m fine not being the first man she’s ever loved because I know I’m going to be the last.”

Love could be about money. It made things easier, that was for sure. But the best kind of love was about so much more than that. It was about giving the person you loved everything. The easy, effortless things, but also the hardest intangible stuff, the uncomfortable. It was about telling someone that you loved them by giving them everything you had and everything you didn’t because they mattered more to you than anything material ever would or could.