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While I scanned our bedroom, everyone gave me the space they thought I needed. There on Liz’s nightstand was a nearly empty water bottle, reminding me of all the times I gave her shit for her inability to finish one off. Next to it was a packet of her nausea medication, the foil sticking up from all but two of the pill slots, reminding me how difficult her pregnancy had been. Toward the back was her alarm clock, bringing me back to the day she had unplugged it to put an end to the awful interference buzzing it made when she received an e-mail on her BlackBerry. In the middle was the book of names we had pored over, where we found a name for our child.

At that moment, the last few lines of “I Remember Me” by the Silver Jews started playing in my head:

I remember her

And I remember him

I remember them

I remember then

I’m just rememberin’

I’m just rememberin’

Just rememberin’

I’m just rememberin’

The words repeated over and over again in my head as I rushed out of the room and into our office.

I sat down on the floor in front of my wall of music and began furiously grabbing CDs and records from the shelves. It probably was the last thing I should have been worried about then, but I had an overwhelming compulsion to gather songs for Liz’s funeral. I couldn’t bear the thought of hearing all the usual depressing funeral music—“On Eagle’s Wings” and all the other bullshit songs that you’re supposed to play when someone dies. I was suddenly determined to create the greatest funeral playlist that there had ever been, and it was a more difficult task than I had imagined. Liz and I had way different tastes in music. She was into the kind of pop music that made me want to gag—you know, Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake, and anything else played over and over again on the local Top 40 radio station—while I listened to indie rock and jazz that rarely made it to commercial radio at all. I tried to think of the best way to honor her memory, but there was no way I was going to be responsible for turning her funeral into a dance party. Luckily, most of the music I listened to was rather mournful, so I couldn’t really go wrong with that. The only real requirement was that the songs meant something to both of us.

But the first song I wanted to add violated my only requirement, and was in fact hated by Liz because it was the one song I asked her to play if I died: “Dress Sexy at My Funeral” by Smog. The title alone indicates that it’s completely inappropriate for an actual funeral, but I always hoped that mine would have a few moments of laughter, and I thought Liz’s should be the same way. A.J. came into my office and sat down on the floor next to me, immediately joining me in scanning my music shelves. I didn’t tell him what I was up to, but he figured it out. He knew what an important part music played in my life, and he understood just how cathartic the playlist creation process would be for me.

Without looking at him I said, “Dude. The first song is gonna be ‘Dress Sexy at My Funeral.’”

A.J. shared my music taste, but had a better ear for the appropriate. “I don’t know about that,” he said, looking at me as if I’d truly lost my mind.

“Oh, come on. No one’s gonna be listening to the lyrics. You and I will be the only people who’ll know just how screwed up the song is.” I added it to the playlist and continued digging through mine and Liz’s musical past, running ideas past A.J., and listening to his suggestions.

He proposed “Une Année sans Lumiére” by Arcade Fire, “Last Tide” by Sun Kil Moon, “Falling Slowly” by the Frames, and a few others.

“I’ve got to include that Bee Gees song that Feist covered, you know, the one we played at our wedding? ‘Inside and Out.’ And ‘Tennessee’ by the Silver Jews. Oh. And anything off of In the Aeroplane over the Sea.” An hour later I had my playlist.

A.J. worked on extracting the files from the CDs and creating the perfect play order while I moved on to the next important task: culling through over twelve