Bethanny told us she was here to shake us out of the comfortable way we were living, and so she had one more request.

“This is going to be uncomfortable,” she said. “But it’s important to sit in your uncomfortable feelings.”

Bethanny asked us to make a list of the ten physical objects we cared about most in the world. She did not direct us on how to choose. Instead, she talked about inheritance. She said, “Not everything that matters to you will matter to the people you leave behind.”

Some people did not want to hear that, but she went on.

“Don’t you realize the things that are the most important to you might not matter to the people you love? In fact, those inheritances could be a burden to them.”

People around me started murmuring.

“That’s a kick in the pants,” Richard whispered.

She wanted us to write down what we valued the most.

I stared at a piece of paper numbered one to ten, unable to think of one thing that mattered to me.

I wrote down: “computer.”

I felt bad about myself for it. My computer would be obsolete in a few years. The hard drive had pictures of Bobby and me from vacations, from our first apartment together, our first Christmas, and pictures of him sleeping, because I loved the way he looked like a little boy, innocent, like he’d never hurt anyone in his entire life. There were pictures of us with sunburns, on the beach, half a dozen photos with slight variations between them as we tried to get the shot of us just right. Others of sunsets, of mountains—always empty of people—and vastness. Who would I bequeath these to? Digital files in the thousands, an accumulation of our lives that only we wanted to see or maybe neither of us wanted to see anymore. There were pictures of my life before him. It was all separated by year, tidily organized for optimal viewing.

Numbers two to ten. I cared about things, inanimate objects, small items from flea markets that I had found, or, better yet, that we had found together. But were they the most important things to me? No.

Bethanny said, “Don’t write ‘computer.’”

I looked up and heard grumbling around me.

“Don’t tell me you wrote down ‘computer,’” she said to all of us. A few people looked around to see who had done it—who had so little going for them. I saw others cross out a line on their paper; I wasn’t the only one. But did Debbie write down “computer,” too? Did Monica? Did Nathan?

“A computer is your most precious object?”