I was impatient as you selected the flowers one at a time for the bouquets: the peonies, pinks, and coral bells you had grown. You kept asking: What do you think? How do they look? How long will they last? How would I know? You took joy in the choosing, your gnarled hands arranging each bloom. I was mystified, embarrassed, even: they’d been dead some twenty years, your husband, your brother. I couldn’t understand: I, with no deaths to my name, with all my deaths waiting ahead.