When I was in high school, our yearbook had a page that said “Faces” with lots of little thumb-sized pictures, and we all very carefully wrote the name of the person under each picture. I was included in one with three other girls: Doris Banks and Lois Starnes and Jean Burr. I still like to look at those girls, the wavy curls with great big bows pinned to the side, a style that seems to have returned, infinite recycling.

Darling Lil, 2 sweet 2 be 4gotten.

That was written so many times in my yearbook, but I suspect it wasn’t true at all, both the sweet part and the forgotten. I stayed in touch with many people over the years—through Christmas cards, changes in address, the occasional swapping of birth announcements, and then wedding and retirement, and then the obituaries started rolling in and have continued.

Stay sweet, Cutie-Pie.

My best friend in elementary school was Bettie Conroy; she lived down the street, and I went to her house almost every afternoon after my mother died. Then at some point, it was like I just stopped going, and I don’t remember why.

Bettie had a doll I loved, and she would let me hold her if I promised to be very careful—a bridal doll, all white lace and veil. And we roller-skated, our keys on strings around our necks, the scritch-scratch sound of those old metal wheels on the sidewalks. Remember all those times I took you all to Wal-Lex for birthday parties or just on a Saturday afternoon? I always thought about skating with Bettie just a few blocks away. A different time, a different life, and yet it felt like the two overlapped, a double exposure of me in two places.

“What happened to your mother?” Bettie asked one of those days, and though her mother shushed her, she also stopped stirring to listen. We were there in the kitchen because she had promised to let us crack and break the eggs. “I mean did you see her?” Bettie said.

I focused on the recipe her mother had on the counter, something from Woman’s Day, a magazine my mother had also sometimes bought. Cheese soufflé, costs 63¢; 6 large servings, the recipe said. Warn the family that the soufflé must be served immediately!

I nodded but gave nothing else; it felt like a betrayal, and I was still harboring the hope that it had all been a terrible mistake, that it wasn’t my mother after all.

Maybe that was the last day I spent at Bettie’s; I have tried so many times to remember what came next, but I can’t, just as I now sometimes look at the Faces page and, even seeing the names written there in my own youthful handwriting, can’t place them. Your father often says, “Of course you can’t remember! We’re old as dirt, Lil,” and we laugh.