My head’s in a whirl. I don’t know where to put anything in my head. How do I analyze this so I can figure out how I feel about it, how to deal with it?

We know Daddy’s dead because a Darien policeman came to the door and told Mom so.

She’s furious because Daddy’s brother called and asked her to pay for his burial. She’s crazed out-of-her-mind with anger and tells him to go to hell.

After that, we don’t know when, where, how, Daddy’s buried.

A manila envelope comes in the mail, addressed to my sisters and me. It’s Daddy’s burial flag. The beautiful red, white, and blue of the great U.S.A. It’s five by nine-and-a-half feet in size. The size impresses me.

No one’s interested in the flag, but me. I tenderly keep it with my things. I peel the return address label off the envelope and save it. There’s no name on it, just a Hartford address. Daddy had cousins there; none that I ever met, or if I did, don’t remember.

I’m too young to understand that he’s buried in a Connecticut state veteran’s cemetery. I do know that this is the flag that covered his coffin.