Things in my life that I remember dying, roughly in order:

- My father's father
- My mother's grandmother
- My mother's other grandmother
- A kitten named Diva (hit by a car)
- The class rabbit Thumper (in our backyard while we had him at home for the summer)
- A caterpillar we wanted to grow into a butterfly
- Another kitten named Diva (sick when we got her)
- Two girls from my middle school killed in a fire (we sang a song for them in the fall choir concert)
- Two green anole lizards whose names I don't remember
- A frog
- Several fish
- A cage of gerbils
- A mouse
- A boy from my high school (committed suicide)
- My iguana Iggy
- The plants in my college dorm room
- A girl from my college (car accident)
- My childhood cat Koko
- My childhood dog Barkley
- The plants in my first apartment
- My childhood cat Jojo
- The plants I planted in my south Philly backyard
- My partner's father
- My partner's grandmother
- My partner's childhood cat Mandu
- My partner and I's cat Talula
- My childhood cat Bill
- My mother's mother
- My partner's grandfather
- My father's mother
- My mother's father
- My mother's sister

I remember only a few funerals, strangely many of them in the same room.

Just outside that room are couches that face each other with a cheap wood table between them bearing magazines about Minnesota and small packets of tissues.

The room itself is beige with a slight orange tint. There are lifesaver mints everywhere, which I always find simultaneously strange and useful. The door enters in from what I believe is the south and west corner of the room. On the right is a small shelf and display area upon which rests a book one can sign. Next to that usually sits a pile of small cards with a name and small quote.

To the left of the door is a table covered in cloth. It either holds a book with photos or sits empty next to an easeled picture board with pins pushing into the surface.

The chairs, I think, are pink and gold and are lined up evenly with backs to those who enter. They are facing the dais and podium which seem to made of the same material as the table in the sofa-ed room just previous. There is a microphone on the lectern though it is usually poorly used and in my memory I never hear voices amplified.

Sometimes there is a coffin. If so, there is also a body. In all cases this is the strangest, weirdest, hardest moment.

In the place of the coffin there may instead be a small white box.

There is carpet on the floor and flowers up in front. The colors change but they feel the same.

There is some amount of sitting and hugging and talking. I mention things about my life to people I so rarely see and they nod and raise their eyebrows and shrug their shoulders. "Well that is very interesting, indeed," is the tenor of most of these conversations.

There are promises that this must not be the only time we see each other.

There are quiet moments of hanging coats on hooks and breathing in and out. There are contortions when one sits not to face directly front.

Sometimes there is slipping out the door and back into the kitchen for a cup of coffee and powdered creamer.

Afterwards in the car on the way to outdoors place there is usually a reflection on how unreal it all feels. That feeling never quite dissipates even when it is punctuated with something else much heavier.