The period in that day about which I am fuzziest is the period in the kitchen. I made my mother’s chamomile tea, so pale it was hardly more than water, the way she liked it. I ate a muffin. I was aware, as I put on not too much butter, that it was the last time I would ever do what I knew was best for myself in deference to her watchful eye. Freddy had put out the cookies in their box, but I knew not to put too much butter on my muffin, and yet I also knew that a well-toasted muffin must have enough butter to make it delicious—an amount my mother had demonstrated to me in my early childhood.

She buttered her own muffin.

I said that there were a thousand things I had still to ask her. “I’m not ready for this yet,” I said.

“We’re all as ready as we’re ever going to be,” said my mother. “If you have things to ask me, then ask me now, Harry. I’ll do my best to tell you.”

I couldn’t think of anything. For some reason, I asked her how to make oatmeal. She said to follow the directions on the box but use milk instead of water, and to add a little bit of cinnamon. “And keep stirring,” she said. “Don’t let it get lumpy.” Freddy asked how to make roast chicken. “Boys,” she said. “Most of my recipes are written down in that blue notebook. Whatever isn’t in that blue notebook you can ask Janet about; she knows how I cook most things. Otherwise, use a cookbook. The world is full of good recipes.”

Freddy looked up at the shelves over the table and saw the winning half of the wishbone still sitting there. He reached over and picked it up. “What did you wish, Mom?” he asked.

“I wished for this to be over as quickly and as painlessly as possible.” My father began to cry again, but my mother smiled. “And I got my wish.” She looked back down at her English muffin. “I got my wishes so often,” she said.

There was a pause.

She turned to me then. “Harry,” she said. “There’s one thing I haven’t had time to do, and I’m telling you because you’ll remember and your father and Freddy won’t. I had the arrangement of dried flowers that goes in the front hall in the country redone, and I haven’t picked it up yet. It’s at that dried-flower shop near the antique dealer where we bought your desk, and it’s supposed to be ready this weekend. Please try to get it before the end of the month, because if you wait all summer, it’ll get kicked around in their storage area and it’ll look awful.”

I stared at her for a second. “Yes, of course,” I said. “I’ll get the flowers.”

“They’re being put in that same ceramic pot that they’ve always been in,” she said.