When we found out about the service, Jonah insisted we go, and I didn't argue, because I already knew there wasn't a version of that Saturday where he'd have let himself skip it.
The funeral home was quiet and formal in the specific way these things always are — soft organ music, folding chairs arranged in careful rows, the particular hush of a room full of people who mostly didn't know each other well but were bound together for an hour by the same loss.
Arthur's son and daughter sat in the front row. I recognized them vaguely from a handful of holiday visits over the years, cars in Arthur's driveway that came and went too fast to leave much of an impression. His son, Preston, looked to be in his mid-fifties, gray at the temples, sitting rigid with his hands folded in his lap. His daughter, Diane, sat beside him, quietly crying in the controlled way people cry when they're also aware of being watched.
