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I try to calculate. We are burying just a portion of his ashes. The rest will be displayed in bits and pieces. Some are split between three pink and green cloisonné mini-urns on my mother’s mantel. Some are in a “Granddaddy” Build-a-Bear made for my niece. Some will be scattered at the family cemetery, in a wheat field where my father spent his summers as a child. I abandon the math. This all seems a bit silly. And he was not a silly man.

Dad was a government servant. His preference was for all things simple: pleated polyester pants, microwave dinners. His favorite things were blood-and-guts action movies and hours of philosophical conversation over morning coffee. He was a therapist who treated Vietnam vets’ war trauma, though he did not fight in the war himself. Growing up, I heard bits and pieces about his work and some horror stories from Vietnam. But Dad’s “guys,” as he called his clients, seemed more like mythical characters to me until we had a living wake—a memorial service held before someone dies—a couple of weeks ago, and I noticed a crusty guy wearing a trucker cap in the back row, unobtrusively showing his support.

On the other hand, Mom is a nervous lady, given to melodrama. She’s a former Southern beauty queen, and with her heavyset frame and salt-and-pepper hair, she can look ultrasophisticated when she chooses to streamline. But on most days she prefers black socks under tan sandals, paired with wrinkled, cropped khakis and oddly layered T-shirts that, more often than not, she slept in the night before. By midday she’s tugging at the ends of her shirt, combing her hair, and declaring, “I feel so frumpy!”

Now that Mom has lost her lifetime love, I stand back and allow her center stage in her rather public grieving process. At today’s wake, I wander around stiffly, avoiding the sympathetic hugs and talk of how I’ll be able to feel his presence “if only I open my heart.”

My mom and sister mourn, as they will for months. Sitting on the edge of my parents’ bed, they cry it out. They purge the closets of his extra-extra-large, tall-size flannel and Oxford-cloth shirts (striped and plaid) and his white V-necks. They keep their eyes on the sky, watching for eagles to circle above the house, insistent that his “spirit animal” carries messages from beyond.

I don’t cry. He doesn’t appear in my dreams. I avoid my parents’ house. It’s not that anything has changed that much. But I’d imagined that after Dad died I would be upset. In fact, I don’t feel much of anything, and as I think about it, I haven’t felt much of anything for quite some time. I call it “creepy normal.” On my trips to the grocery store, when visiting with friends, and during my afternoons with Oprah, it’s like I’m still sitting in the converted dining room—in the green wingback chair—with his body, silent and still, like I’m waiting to wrap up an unfinished conversation.

There’s something that bothers me, something Dad told me a few weeks before he died. He had structured his life around family, friends, and service work. He connected very deeply with people. Yet he viewed himself as a loser. Why? Because he didn’t think he’d made enough money. Like so many other men, he judged himself through the lens of status. In his mind, a couple of rental investment properties didn’t cut it.

I, on the other hand, have never had trouble making money. But now that Dad is gone, I find it hard to remember what the goal is supposed to be. This? Ted and I designed our home as a background for photo shoots: white-on-white-on-white décor, accented with bold doses of nothing. It’s the kind of purity you can purchase on a long afternoon at IKEA—perfectly generic. We periodically swear off business talk during our nightly dinners out, declaring some nonwork “personal time,” but we never seem to find another topic worth pursuing. Our conversation always careers towards production plans. My malaise never comes up. When I watch Ted across the table, I notice how he refuses to look me in the eyes. I wonder if it’s possible to be this