I am grateful for the little things, for they are, in fact, the big things.

Ask anyone about a person they lost and they won't lead with achievements. They'll say: he always warmed the mug first. She had a specific laugh at bad puns.

The big things — titles, milestones, the events that got photographed — turn out to be the packaging. What gets kept is texture: the way someone remembered how you take your tea, without asking, for eleven years.

That's not sentimentality. It's just what memory actually stores.

Worth knowing while people are still here. The small attentions you're paying today are what you'll be remembered by, and they cost less than the big ones.