A year later it was Christmas again, and we did it quietly.

There was no enormous chaotic gathering, no performance of a family that no longer existed.

We put up the tree slowly.

My daughter placed three ornaments on the same branch and my husband, wisely, left them exactly where she put them.

Lowell came, with his son, from across the country he had once put between himself and all of this — come back now, on purpose, for good.

The children made paper snowflakes and taped them crookedly to the windows, and no one commented on anyone’s body, and no one mentioned my mother in front of them, and the holiday was allowed to be only a holiday.