She was scolding us, as if she was better than us. The woman next to me fingered the gold necklaces she was wearing, and I knew they were going on her list. She saw me staring at them and said, “I’m giving them to my daughters.”

One necklace for each daughter. How would she choose?

I had still not added anything else to my list. “Wedding ring” wasn’t the first thing I wrote down, even though it was the best thing I owned. People I didn’t know liked to admire it and give me compliments on it. Bobby had it made custom. He thought about the things I liked and put them into a ring design—a band of diamond chips with our names inscribed on the side, where only I could see the detail. When he gave it to me, I thought, I will love this man forever. Maybe I knew I wanted to be buried with it, no matter what. I wanted it to be an achievement no one could ever take away from me, even in death. I did this, even if I did it poorly.

I added a piece of art that I loved—a drawing of a dead owl a friend had given me as a gift. It was representative of a spirit leaving a body, and I hung it over my side of the bed so I could look at it every morning.

Bobby said, “That’s grim.” But I didn’t think so.

I also wrote down: “framed photograph of a night swimming pool.”

The pool was empty and full of possibility, and from time to time I’d look at it before bed, hoping it would end up in my dreams. Sometimes that worked.

I crossed out “computer” and left my list at three. Bethanny told us time would be up soon. I wondered what she had put on her list. She was a very spiritual person, which I found admirable. Not the kind of spiritual that lined her pockets with crystals and weighed down her neck with amulets. She was low-key about her spirituality in a way that felt attainable for those of us who were struggling to find peace. She had collected us through her website’s information form and e-mails from curious people, asking what it meant to help someone die. Then she vetted us carefully. Just like how she collected our clients. She told us about her own mother’s death, which was a way to say she was just like us—a person who knew deep loss. Her mother was private, she said. Bethanny didn’t know she was sick until her mother left her a letter saying she was going off to die. Bethanny had no closure with her mother. That’s why she had made having closure her mission—for both the dying and those left behind. Sometimes I thought Bethanny got off on maybe being a guru or something.