They Held My Funeral While I Was Still Breathing. Then My Seven-Year-Old Nephew Looked Into the Coffin and Said, “Mommy, Aunt Madelyn Is Looking at Me”

I keep it on the refrigerator.

I think it is better, for now, that he remembers it his way, and I am in no hurry to give him mine.

I still remember all of it, when I let myself — the smell of the lilies, the grain of the wood an inch from my face, the dark, the sound of my husband handing away my grandmother’s necklace while my sister was already wearing it.

But most of all I remember that thin blade of light through the gap in the lid.