The first time my mother says she saw my dead father is the morning after I brought her home with me from the hospital. It is early April, and unseasonably frigid. I hear the gas furnace kick on like a drum as if announcing my entrance into the guest bedroom.

My mother’s brown skin is dry as a coconut, though her scissored, crimped hair is greasy with sweat. In her ears are the tiny crucifix earrings my father gave her a long time ago.

She tells me my father had been standing in the corner of the bedroom during the night and spoke to her. She sits on the edge of the double bed and expresses herself with confidence.

“Praise the Lord. I knew your father wouldn’t abandon me in my hardest days,” she says. Her voice is soft, crooning. My mother’s seventy-five-year-old body is sick, but I haven’t considered that she is losing her marbles.

It’s nearly noon, and I’m still in my pajamas, sitting on the deck. The late summer sun is high and hot. The beach is dotted with sun worshippers. Seagulls forage on dying clams.

Next to me on the wicker cabinet sits the copper urn filled with his ashes. The salt air is starting to turn the copper a shade of green.

I sit alone thinking things, one that the new French vanilla creamer in my coffee is too thick, too syrupy. I think about the cleaning inside I should be doing, noting that Edward would have reproached me and called me lazy, maybe even stupid.

The kids are upstairs still sleeping. Last night, they saw the latest Star Wars movie. Xander, the dog, is on his side next to me, dreaming, whimpering. A bee flies around his beige, floppy ear.

Two days from now is the memorial service, and I still haven’t figured out a menu. Maybe I should just call Ocean Foodworks, order their chicken parmesan and lemon flounder which the kids love. Maybe add some shrimp cocktail and clams casino, Edward’s favorite appetizers. He’d never been a risk-taker with food.

The day was clear and sunny, with a dreamy tropical breeze. On the wooden dock, the wife stood by the big boat with her husband, waiting among the other 30 people. The couple’s children, a girl and boy, ages six and four respectively, clung to the wife’s hands. It was quiet, except for the occasional licking of the waves against the bulkhead.

The night before they were told they must arrive 10 minutes before the departure which was nine o’clock in the morning. The rules also stated that they were to bring nothing on board but themselves.

Behind the boat’s wheel, a man with a graying goatee gunned the motor. His comrade, a brown man with tobacco-stained teeth, stood on the dock. He carried a braided rope over his shoulder. In broken English, he yelled, “Et’s time to geet onboard.” One at a time, the people climbed onto the boat’s berth which was arranged with long benches.

“I’ve got you,” an old, frail man with a fisherman’s hat said softly to the stooped woman gripping his hand. He guided her as she stepped over the boat’s rim. They joined a group of men, women, and children positioned in the center of the boat.

Tammy and I knew it was because of our hair. It was Friday afternoon, and we sat thigh to thigh on a wooden bench at the edge of the football field where the cutest boy from eighth grade would soon appear. No boys had ever declared their love for us, and so we talked about ways to improve our chances.

I pushed the sides of my bangs behind my wire-rimmed glasses. The latest teen magazines lay open on our laps. The two of us alternately admired and resented the images of the sun-kissed, bikini-clad girls from California, a place where it never rained, and where the Beach Boys cruised around in convertibles. It was a galaxy away from our faceless town in Pennsylvania.

In Seventeen magazine, a girl had bragged about how her boyfriend had gotten turned on after running his fingers in her long golden hair. Tammy and I had debated the meaning of turned on: Was it the same as what Jay and the Americans meant when they sang “This Magic Moment?”