I was cleaning off my desk and found a cd from BMG that had arrived months ago, just after Steve died. I kept shuffling it from place to place, wondering how to notify them of his death, but I had never opened the cardboard sleeve. Today I did.

He bought it for me. “Hard Candy” by the Counting Crows. I had told him right before Christmas that it was the only CC album I didn’t have.

He was like that, storing up little bits of information so he could surprise me. He loved giving little gifts, and when I wasn’t being disapproving about the money he was spending, I loved receiving them.

It’s so fitting that on “Hard Candy” Counting Crows did a cover version of Joni Mitchell, because don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone? They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.