That afternoon, we went to the funeral home to choose a coffin. There were dozens of designs available, and the choice reminded me of shopping for furniture with my mother; I could hear her voice criticizing busy designs and fussy craftsmanship. Freddy and I walked through the display room, and at last I saw a coffin of very simple design, made of beautifully grained wood, highly polished, with elegantly finished corners. It reminded me of the piano at home. I said I thought it was the right one, and my father and Freddy conceded that it was. Then the director of the funeral home (how do people become the directors of funeral homes, I wondered) took us into his office and said that everything would be taken care of and that the coffin would be brought to the chapel where the funeral was to take place. He asked whether we wanted to have flowers at the funeral.

“Oh, yes,” said my father. “She would have wanted lots of flowers.”

The director of the funeral home suggested calla lilies.

I said that my mother had always hated calla lilies.

“I like calla lilies,” my father said, but Freddy pitched in with me.

“Mom used to say they were the ugliest flowers on earth,” he said. “Like plastic coffee filters.”

The director of the funeral home wondered whether we had any other particular ideas, and brought out a book with glossy photographs of funeral wreaths.

I looked at Freddy and he looked at me. “Pink peonies,” I said. “The only flowers for this funeral should be pink peonies.”

The funeral director asked no further questions about the peonies. He wrote down our instructions. He wondered in what clothes we wanted to bury my mother.

My father broke down at that point. “She had such beautiful clothes,” he said. “We have closets and closets full of clothes at home. What clothes? How can we possibly choose clothes?”

But I had seen this question coming for a long time. I put my hand on my father’s arm. “I’ll take care of it,” I said.

“Thank you,” my father said, and stared off into space for a minute.

I assured the director of the funeral home that I would bring the clothes up later in the afternoon.

We arranged all the other details and returned home. I went into my mother’s enormous closet and found among the hundreds of dresses and suits and skirts and blouses the dress she had worn to my party, the black dress with the trails of brilliant flowers falling down it, like fresh snowflakes or chance tears, flowers in red and blue and pink. I picked out a pair of stockings and black shoes and put them all together in a bag and took them up to the funeral home.