I was nine.

There had been a night, and then there had been a funeral, and in between a fog my mother had never let me fill in.

I remembered being told he was gone.

I remembered the closed casket and being told I could not see him because the accident had been bad.

I remembered my mother, dry-eyed, accepting condolences in a black dress, and my little sister clinging to her skirt, and myself standing apart, the only one crying.

“There was never a viewing,” I said slowly, hearing it for the first time as an adult.