Here’s a tip for formal summer funeral wear: Find a black cotton dress with long sleeves that roll up and button themselves into short sleeves so you can stay cool in the muggy transitions between funeral home and church and cemetary, warm in the over-air-conditioned country club where the buffet luncheon takes place. I found my black dress at Target last year; I didn’t love it and wasn’t sure if I’d ever wear it, but as they say, a black dress always comes in handy.

When old people die it is never a surprise, never really. It is the only ending available. It makes perfect sense. And yet, of course, it doesn’t: the surprise comes when you realize how imperfect and senseless it feels, despite knowing the facts. I realized that and then I spent a sleepless night or two mourning memories, a history severed, the complications that well up and cannot be resolved. What’s left when someone’s gone? Whatever’s in my head, I guess, and in my relatives’ many heads. Also (in my case) a night table, a middle name, and several hardcover books, including a collection of Tennyson and two Agatha Christie novels. Plus some guilt and unanswered questions and also a lot of gratitude.

In the midst of thinking about these matters I flew to New York to help a friend move to the West Coast — so much transition in so short a time — and on a rainy Saturday morning, muscles aching, I woke at six o’clock to put on my black dress and nice shoes, because that is what you do. Smith Street was still except for pigeons and the lingering smell of Friday’s beer, but Atlantic Avenue was bustling already, mostly with men muttering to themselves in doorways. After five years of city living I learned to ignore men who hurl insults or come-ons, but that day, suddenly, I was indignant — couldn’t these cretins see my black dress? Didn’t they know this wasn’t standard garb for Saturday morning? Wasn’t it obvious where I was going?

No and no and no. A man with animal eyes stumbled after me. “Hey pretty. Pretty lady. Come here. You know you want to. I’ll pay you to come over here. Hey!” I kept walking, feet and face forward, brisk, holding back fists and tears. He screamed. “I’ll pay you money! You look like you should buy a thesaurus!”

New York, like death, is at once obvious and incomprehensible.

The train to Long Island was almost empty. My fellow passengers and I stared out the streaky windows at the grey buildings and sipped our paper cups of coffee. I had a copy of The New Yorker on my lap but I couldn’t read it, there were too many words. I skipped around my iPod — the only thing I’ve wanted to hear lately is music involving British and/or Kiwi men, pre-1990, this has been going on for weeks — and none of it sounded good, so I listened to the train’s rattle and those blasted piercing beeps it emits at each stop. I was relieved yet not relieved when the next stop was mine, because it meant finality.

Catholics, of course, do casket viewings and then full Masses. I was less prepared than I thought I would be for both of these things. It had been some time since I’d set foot in a church, especially with the entire family around, and in the middle of the proceedings an urgent whisper spread from one pew to the next: someone had meant to to mention that the granddaughters would be presenting the gifts before Communion, so, a little freelance altar serving, and as it turns out the sense memory of carrying a small glass cruet of wine remains intact after twenty years. I’d forgotten how well I remembered that.

This sounds so weighty and sad and it is weighty and sad. But it is also, in my family, un-weighty and un-sad. The use of the phrase “family-friendly” to indicate an absence of cursing or sarcasm has always amused me, given the things my people say, and at a funeral no less. What pride I felt, when my youngest cousin — #14 of 14 — took an opportunity to crack wise about the names of the dead buried in marble vaults around our grandmother’s casket! How soothing to hear my uncle do the one about the meth addict trying to study! What Zen to reminisce about Ozarka bottled water, a beverage we have been discussing at length for no particular reason since 2006, when we encountered it at my cousin Joseph’s wedding! And by the time Matt was explaining his travails with an freakishly deep ladle it was almost as if rain and death weren’t possible, as if nothing could hurt and there were no mean words in the world, as if our clothes weren’t black and time could stand still long enough to be grasped.