“I’m sorry for your loss. Though the coroner’s report said your father departed on June 29th, July 1st will be his official date of death because that was when he was found,” the funeral director explained.

We nodded, still processing. Words imprecisely tumbled from his mouth, and his eyes flitted around the room. Papers and folders lazed about his desk. He lifted a huge Ziploc bag with some change and a few dollars.

“This was found on him, when we took him." He passed the bag to us, and we looked at it wondering what we were supposed to do with it. Our mother took it on our behalf. More words were exchanged, and then they too were lost in the thickness of the July heat and grief.

Suddenly we were in a back room with sample caskets — brushed nickel, copper, hunter green, and a pine wooden box, all at different price points.

“We have to choose something nice,” my brother insisted. I was still disconcerted as to how they wanted us to pick a box in which to lay my father, when he had just died two days ago. What had just happened?

“I want to see him. Where is he?” I asked. The room stood still.

Displaying his own discomfort with our grief, the funeral director said, “Well, I don't know if you want to —”

“I want to see him.”

He walked to a pocket door just beyond the caskets. He slid open the door, and my dad was lying on a metal table with a white sheet over his chest and extremities. Cotton balls were placed over his eyes, and his hair was unkempt. My knees buckled.

Fearful I would faint, my mother grabbed me and called out for help. My uncle came over, and the two steadied me. My brother just walked away.

The next day we met my uncle and aunt at my dad’s apartment to gather clothes for my father. Death and feces greeted us as we unlocked the front door, and the aroma permeated every inch of the apartment. His siblings had covered up the brown and maroon splotches on the floor with a bed sheet so that we didn’t have to see the spot where he had lain dying. We didn’t talk about the smell, the spot, the sorrow. We just took as few short breaths as we could and focused on our task.

“Pick something nice. You know your dad always liked to be sharp.” My uncle told my brother.