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When I was a teenager, I wore my hair short, with long bangs that swept across my forehead. The one I loved hated it.

In the car or the kitchen, on our way to school or church, we fought.

We fought and we fought and we fought—as if it were a matter of great consequence—about the way in which I wore my hair.

Funny now. How important it was, then.

On Tuesday, the ones I loved woke up. They had oatmeal for breakfast, a sliced banana, milk that was poured from a ceramic pitcher. Later, a letter was started, a crossword puzzle was worked in a rocking chair.

At ten o’clock, the one I loved went downstairs and got into the Cadillac. So small behind the steering wheel, she drove downtown to the beauty parlor, where a woman washed and set her hair.

An hour later, she was home again, easing the car into the garage beneath the house. The one I loved climbed the stairs to the kitchen, where the one I also loved sat waiting.

Together, they made peanut butter sandwiches, while downstairs, out of sight, out of mind, a key had been left in an ignition.

The Cadillac was still running, quiet as a ghost.

How many phone calls? A sister, two brothers, former coworkers, friends from college, friends from childhood. I met with the attorney, the pastor, the owner of the funeral home. A memorial service was planned. The pastor gave me books about grief, a chart on which I could mark my progress. Gently, he of the white collar asked me to give a summary of the ones’ I loved lives. He was new to the church, a virtual stranger. The ones I loved had been members for fifty years, but to him, they were faces, maladies—hard of hearing, bad knees—bodies under preternaturally white sheets flashed on the local news.

“Would you like us to do an elderly check?” the operator asked.

“Please,” I said. Everyone knows the elderly routinely need to be checked.

Their bodies were cremated. I picked up the urns from the funeral home and brought them to the house. I set them on the dining room table and touched the metal plaques on which their names were inscribed.

This was what was left of them.

They had been living, writing letters, doing crosswords, and now all that remained was sealed inside two golden urns.

What did remain after a furnace? Ashes, tiny pieces of bone. A tooth? I imagined a single molar, white as the sheets that had covered them.

Outside, the light turned gray, then black, and stars pricked holes in the sky. I remained where I was, stationed on a dining room chair, guardian of the urns.

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