Today, to procrastinate on writing, I started browsing files on my computer. I stumbled upon a folder called “Ramón Headshots.” As I clicked through the series of photos, I felt a fullness in my chest—the good kind that results from a hearty dose of gratitude.

This image specifically caught my eye because it perfectly captures Ramón’s “Thinking Face.”

Whenever I saw him like this, I knew he was working out something complicated. Sometimes it was related to a particular case he was preparing for, but I most often saw it when he was trying to decide what time he needed to wake up the following day.

Ramón would announce times out loud, counting backward as he calculated how long his morning tasks would take—all while wearing the face in the photo.

9:30
8:45
8:20
8
7:30
7
6:15

Sometimes, just to be a punk, I’d call out random numbers the way the children do when they try to mess up someone who’s counting. Then he’d give me another of the many faces I saw when I clicked down memory lane today.

This morning, as I drove to the doctor, I listened to a Spotify station called Millennial Emo Mix. I got that about-to-cry-warm-eyed feeling when Jimmy Eat World’s “Hear You Me” began playing.

The song transported me back to the early 2000s, when I searched AOL profiles and Xanga sites to connect with other people with CF. When one of these internet friends died, her husband posted “Hear You Me” as a tribute to her. At that time, this lyric destroyed me:

May angels lead you in.

Hearing it today, I connected with the fact that I, too, lost a spouse I loved dearly. And I had one of those moments when I really miss Ramón. Maybe it’s magnified by the fact that it’s President’s Day, which is the day we learned his cancer was back—that it hadn’t been a one-and-done thing. Here’s the lyric that struck me today:

What would you think of me now?

I wonder how Ramón would answer that question. And whether he’d put on his Thinking Face as he pondered.