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.

Then we all sat down to write eulogies. Freddy had done a lot the previous evening, while my mother lay dying. I had sketched out drafts of one kind or another on and off during the preceding six months, but they all seemed banal to me. My father headed back to his bedroom to sit in the red chair and write.

“I suppose we should ask someone to read these at the funeral,” he said in passing.

“I’m going to read my own,” said Freddy.

I wavered.

“I couldn’t possibly stand up there and read,” said my father.

“I’m going to read my own,” said Freddy. “If you want me to, I’ll read yours, too.”

“If you’re sure you can do that,” said my father, “then you might as well. But I wouldn’t plan on that. Funerals are terrible. I don’t know how I can even get through the day.”

I wavered. Freddy looked at me. “I’ll do yours if you want, Harry,” he said.

I said that I would have to wait until the morning to decide. “If I can, I’ll read my own,” I said. “If not, I’ll let you do it.”

Then I sat down and wrote my eulogy. It was four pages long, double-spaced, and it was about my whole life with my mother, and it took me fifteen minutes to get it down on paper. It was like typing out something I had memorized a long time before.

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