“I don’t know what else to do,” said my father. “Look at her,” he said. “She’s still so beautiful.”

“Well, let’s at least get out of this room,” I said, and I led them down the hall to the kitchen. My father sat on a chair and continued to cry. Freddy and I washed the dishes from the light meal we’d had earlier.

“Anyone want a cookie?” said Freddy, but no one did, so he put the cookies back in the box and put the plate in the dishwasher.

“Does someone want to go back and see what’s happening in there?” asked my father.

There was a brief silence. I focused on rearranging the glasses on the upper rack of the dishwasher. “I’ll go,” said Freddy. My father and I stared at the walls until Freddy came back a minute later. “Same as before,” he said.

I took out a pad. “All that stuff she said was incredible,” I said.

“Your mother was such a remarkable woman,” my father began, and then started to weep again.

I was suddenly businesslike. “Let’s try to remember as much as we can,” I said. “I want to write down as much as possible, so we can remember it.” I began listing things as I remembered them. Freddy came up with some others that I had already forgotten. My father also volunteered a few. It never occurred to me to write down what I had said to her; now it saddens me that I remember her last words so well, while my last words to her have vanished.

“The first night your mother and I went out,” my father said, “she recited Yeats to me.” My mother had had a joke about that first date. She used to say that she had recited Yeats because she couldn’t think of anything to say. But my father was not in a jokey mood. “I’d never been out with a girl who did anything like that.” He paused. “It was something about dreams,” he said.

Freddy and I, who had known the story since childhood, chimed almost in unison, “Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.”

My father looked at us in surprise. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, that was it.” And he seemed to drift off into thought. “I guess someone should check again,” he said.