In a dream, my father comes back from the dead, furious that we held a funeral. Resurrected in the kitchen, fuming: “How could you imagine I would die?” My mother had buried him in a maroon sweatsuit from his beloved alma mater: “So he’ll be comfy lying in there” she said. Mollified, even in death.

↔

In the backseat of the car, my brother gently explains to his young son: “After Poppo passed away, we put his body in a box called a casket and buried it in the cemetery.” My nephew, panicked: “Okay, but what did you do with his head?”

↔

In an attempt at mourning, I read books about mortality and learn that in the 1800s a society called The Association for the Prevention of Premature Burial invented something called a safety coffin. It was fitted with a little rope inside that the dead person could pull to ring a bell up on earth to say they’d been buried alive. A strange reassurance, an icy ease.

↔

A trick he taught me: If you tell someone that you are going to pour boiling water on her hand but instead you pour freezing cold water, she’ll scream as if you’ve burned her. The mind does the suffering for you.