I still can’t quite believe Harold’s gone. We met on the first day of second grade—he offered me half his peanut-butter sandwich after I dropped mine in the dirt—and, from that instant, our lives stitched themselves together. I watched him grow from the skinny kid who could outrun everyone at recess into the lanky teenager who tuned his old Fender until the garage trembled, swearing he’d someday play to crowds larger than the map of our hometown. He never made it to stadium lights, but he carried that same beat into everything he did: fixing neighbors’ roofs after summer storms, coaching the Little League team even after his own boys left for college, and sneaking handwritten lyrics into birthday cards because he said every song deserved an audience of one.