My late wife Linda spent nearly five hundred hours hand-sewing a wedding dress for our daughter Sammy. It cost twelve thousand dollars in fine silk, French lace, and crystals, and became her final act of love while she was fighting cancer. She finished about eighty percent of it before she passed. Her sister Amy completed the rest. When the finished dress arrived, Sammy and I both cried. It was Linda’s last gift, carefully stored in a garment bag in the guest room.

Last week my sister Diane visited with her sixteen-year-old daughter Molly. The moment Molly saw the dress she asked to try it on. I told her no—it was delicate and several sizes too small. Sammy gently offered that it might be altered later, after her own wedding. The next morning Diane and I left for groceries while Molly stayed home. When we returned we found her tangled on the floor, scissors in hand, having cut herself out of the dress.