Nine moments across the week the second funeral happened.
Winter 2042. Jan is 44. Mom would have been 74 in March.
11:00 AM.
Daniel's name on the phone. Not Mom's. Daniel doesn't call at 11 AM Eastern. In the half-second before I answer I already know. He says jan. Half a beat. Mom is gone. The uncle just called me. She went in her sleep. Peaceful. I say okay. He says I'm flying out tomorrow. I say me too. He says love you. I say love you. Ninety-eight seconds. June stayed on the chair the whole time, watching me.
The uncle left it untouched.
August walks in with me. He stands by the door; I walk into the kitchen. The cardigan folded on the chair back. The teapot on the counter. The tin on the shelf. And on the kitchen table — the small framed photo Daniel took in 2040. The uncle placed it before locking up. Mom at 72. Looking directly at the camera with the small fixed not-quite-smile she had for most of her life. The apartment is her apartment minus her. Everything in its place except the person who placed it.
The uncle arrives at 2:14 PM.
He has done his crying somewhere else, before this. He hugs me. He says jia. Then: your mother loved you very much. Slow Mandarin, the kind he uses for the most important things. I say thank you. Daniel goes directly to the kitchen to make tea — the protocol has been running in this family across fifty years, longer than me. Mom's chair stays empty. The grandfather's chair stays empty. Six adults in the living room around two empty chairs. The chairs aren't empty in the wrong way.
Ten AM, day four.
Small, per Mom's own specification in the living-will she'd left in 2032: no flowers other than white, no speeches except by the uncle, small service. Thirty-three people. The uncle tells a story from 1975 — Mom was seven, got lost walking home from school, was brought home by a stranger who turned out to be the grandmother of the family she would, in 1985, marry into briefly. Eight minutes. Daniel said afterward it was exactly the right story. The service lasted forty-one minutes. She had planned it exactly.
9 PM, day four.
Daniel and I at the kitchen table. Just us — August at the hotel for the night so we can have the apartment. Four days, Daniel has made tea for everyone. Answered the door. Stood beside the uncle during the incense moment without being asked. Now he sits. We talk for an hour and twelve minutes — about Sarah, about Henry in his first year in Seattle, about Lin, eleven, in Berkeley, about Mom. At minute fifty-eight Daniel says I will miss her. I am also relieved she is not, today, in any pain. I say yes. Silence for the last fourteen minutes. The cups went empty.
Went into Mom's bedroom alone on the morning of day five.
I'd walked past the door fifty times. At 8:14 AM I went in. The bed was made. The bedside table was the accurate inventory of Mom on her last night — a novel open to page 142, her reading glasses folded on the small framed photo of the grandfather. I sat with it for a long time. I wanted to leave it exactly as it was. Instead, I knocked the glass of water over. It soaked the edge of the book. I sobbed — not because Mom was gone, but because I had ruined the perfect arrangement of her last night. The bedside table was wet. I was on the floor, a mess.
Day six.
Daniel and I go through Mom's closet. Her written wishes covered specifics: the Longjing tin to me ("the tin Jan understands"), the grandmother's jade bracelet to Daniel. The rest by agreement. Daniel pulls the cream apartment cardigan from the cedar drawer. I say I'd like that one. He says of course. Doesn't ask why. It's the cardigan from every FaceTime call she ever made. Every voice note. Every voice note I now can't un-remember. It's mine on day six. I don't wear it yet. Years later, on some Sundays at four, I will put it on.
Day seven.
Cousin Lin drives us. Daniel booked the same JFK flight back specifically, so we'd be on the same plane home. We go through security together. He hugs me at the railing. He says I'm sorry, sister. I say I'm sorry, brother. He says Sarah will want to call you tomorrow night. I say okay. He goes through first. I watch him until he disappears into the security hall. August is beside me. The plane is the plane.
Back to Brooklyn on a Friday night.
June came home Sunday morning — slightly indignant about the week, otherwise fine. The second Sunday after the funeral, I hang Mom's 2040 photo. August hands me the hammer and nail without being asked. I hang it beside the grandfather's photo, same horizontal line. Seven framed things now, and the faded yellow rectangle that's barely a rectangle anymore. I stand back. Mom at 72. Looking at me across the room the way she looked at the camera. The lamp was on. The cat was on the chair.