“Everything dies, buttercup,” he once said as we sat on the front porch, watching a storm roll in. Carver was toddling in his play pool, and Alice was gurgling on his knee. “That’s a fact. But you wanna know a secret?” And I had leaned in, so sure it was a cure for death, a way to bat it away— “Everything that dies never really goes. In little ways, it all stays.”
