What I will always find amazing is the system they devised to identify people, something that I have thought of every time I’ve found myself in a large crowd of strangers. They separated the men from the women, then divided groups by height and weight, skin and hair color. Then, people there to claim a loved one were asked to name something (clothing, a scar, a birthmark) in hopes that those searching would need to see only two or three bodies. Sometimes there were no teeth or fingerprints to trace. One surgeon recognized his own work on an appendix scar and was able to figure out who it was. Volunteers were asked who could walk among the dead and not feel faint or get sick. These are the people who sponged faces and combed hair; they arranged jewelry and sometimes even used makeup. Your father’s grandmother was one of those women, though she was ashamed to say she only lasted an hour. Still, we liked to think that his grandmother, a woman I never got to meet, had gently wiped my mother’s arms and hands, her ankles and feet.

I knew my mother’s hands, the pale-pink polish on her nails, and when I leaned close to her wrist, I thought I could still smell a trace of her perfume. Perhaps that sounds impossible, but I would swear it to this day. I wanted to look beneath the sheet. but the man standing there put a hand on my arm and shook his head. “Don’t do it, sweetheart,” he said, and held my arm, a gentle hold that put me in mind of my mother when we were crossing a street or your father when he thinks I shouldn’t speak. My father had already turned and was halfway down the hall that would lead us outside.

At home, her heavy brown mixing bowl was right on the counter where she had left it, and there was a recipe she had torn from the paper on the kitchen windowsill; my father’s shirts were rolled and sprinkled and ready to be ironed—all promises of her return.

There were happy times, and I never want to forget them. I’m on a blanket in Gloucester with my parents, my mother in a big hat, with a magazine tucked into her bag, my father in waders, gathering his fishing tackle; sometimes he tied a beer to his belt so it would stay cold in the water. I remember them talking about what we would do for supper and how even the simplest thing seemed exciting and something to look forward to. I can feel my mother’s hand there on my forehead, smoothing back my hair, and I hear the surf and feel the liquid warmth of the sun.