Robert Rotenberg is a criminal lawyer, former magazine publisher, and the author the bestselling novel Old City Hall, which was published in 2009. Rotenberg, whose new novel is called The Guilty Plea, will be guest editing The Afterword this week.

My friend Tyler died almost two years ago. He was forty-nine years old and left behind his lovely wife, Susan, a bereaved teenage boy and girl, and four pair of new, itchy socks. I know the socks are itchy because Sandra gave them to me a few months later.

Sandra assured me her son didn’t want them, so out of solidarity for my lost friend I took the socks. I’ll admit, I was impressed when I first saw the long, fancy hosiery. But when I put on the nicest pair my first reaction was “Damn these are itchy.”If they’d belonged to anyone else, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. But these belonged to Tyler. And Tyler was so determinedly contrarian, ever-on the look out for wry humor, constantly poking fun at convention, that the socks seemed fitting.

It was impossible to classify Tyler as left or right, old fashioned or modern. He was as likely to listen to classical music as he was to break out into singing the latest hip-hop song. His humor was hard, and biting and sincere. Always cutting at pretension and waste. But most of all, what made Tyler Tyler, was his red hot anger at injustice in any forms.

He was fearless. Prepared to say what others were only thinking. I’m convinced that if the socks were on the other foot, so to speak, he’d be bitching about them from the moment pure wool touched his precious skin.

I admire Sandra for so many reasons. And giving me the socks optimizes both her strength and her pragmatic heart. After all, just what are you supposed to do with your dead husband’s hose?

Keep them for your kids so they can wear them two decades from now? Seems kind of perverse. Donate them to Goodwill. Perhaps, but somehow it feels lame. Giving them to his friends was the right move.

But boy are they itchy.

Men don’t talk about their socks very much, but everyone from the President of the United States, to the janitor at my daughter’s school, wears a pair every day. Makes a decision each morning which ones to put on, or in the case of Tyler’s socks, put up with, all day long. And trust me, no man likes itchy socks.

That first day I wore a pair, that first long day in Tyler’s socks to be exact, I avoided the temptation to strip off the damn things off. With good reason. The itchiness reminded me of my friend’s way of always prodding the comfortable parts of life. Expecting more.

It’s approaching two years now, and I’ve worked my way through all four pairs. To do any less would have felt like a private, disloyal act.

And of course, there’s been an inevitable solution to this itchy sock dilemma of mine. With each washing, time has softened the edges. Bit by bit lessened the itch. I have deeply mixed feelings about this.

The hardest part is that I know one day I’ll pull on a pair of Tyler’s socks and they’ll feel comfortable. I’ll have to try to remember the itch. And I’ll miss it.