Grieving W’s sweet gift to Michelle

A heavy heart didn't stop former President George W. Bush from sharing a light moment with Michelle Obama at a funeral service for his father, the nation's 41st President.

Bush, who was the 43rd President and preceded Barack Obama, passed what appeared to be some sort of candy to the former First Lady during Wednesday's memorial service for the elder Bush, who died Friday at 94. The tender gesture echoed a sweet moment during the September funeral of Sen. John McCain, also at the Washington National Cathedral, when Bush slipped a cough drop to Michelle.

The handoff during McCain's funeral was much easier as Bush and Michelle were seated next to each other. At the service, “W” was handed a throat lozenge by his wife, Laura, which he passed along.

At Wednesday's service for his father, Bush stopped to shake hands with fellow Presidents Trump, Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter and their wives. Still standing, he made a point of slipping a treat to Michelle, who lit up with a smile during the otherwise somber moment. Bush was then seated in a front-row pew alongside his family.

Following McCain's service, Michelle told NBC's “Today” that she asked for a cough drop after seeing Bush take one from a box bearing the White House emblem.

“They were old cough drops,” she pointed out, “I said, ‘How long have you had these things?' He said, ‘A long time, we've got a lot of these.' ”

While Michelle and W have overcome political differences to form a friendship, President Trump shouldn't expect the same treatment from the former First Lady. In her memoir “Becoming,” which is the best-selling book of 2018, Michelle wrote she will “never forgive” Trump for his continued racist insinuations that Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States.

“(It) was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed,” she wrote.