We had dinner in the library.
We went through old photographs.
Mother recorded stories on my phone because Clara said neither of us would remember everything.
At first Mother resisted.
“I refuse to become an oral-history project.”
Two days later she asked whether the microphone was on.
She told us about her first job.
Her wedding.
The worst meal Father ever cooked.
The time I ran away from home at nine and hid behind the garage for forty minutes.
“I was protesting injustice,” I said.
“You were angry because I made you clean your room.”
“History is written by the survivors.”
Clara laughed.
Sometimes Mother talked about fear.
Sometimes she talked about nothing important at all.
Those recordings became more valuable to me than every possession in the house.
One evening near the end of autumn, she asked us to bring her outside.
The garden had begun turning gold.
We wrapped her in blankets and sat beneath the old elm tree.
