on the local news about a year ago. 

A teen football player had died in a car accident. 

The cameras showed all his friends after the funeral—these big hulking guys, all in tears, saying, “I loved him. We all loved him so much.” 

 I wondered if these guys had told the football player they loved him while he was alive,

 or whether it was only with death that this strange word, love, could be used.