You know the grief that arrives while they're alive. Call it porchlight faith: you still leave the light on, and you're allowed to keep it burning.

The thought behind it

The work here is precision: calling the thing what it is instead of what it has been politely mistaken for. Under Family the distance is rarely the miles; it is the sum of small things left unsaid, compounding quietly. Watch what “11” does here. Change it and the sentence becomes comfortable again, which is how you know it matters.