Living Longer: Letting go takes practice

For as long as I can remember, my mother has instructed me on how to plan her funeral. She wants me to read a eulogy. She wants my brother to play the cello. She shows me where to find her password document, the spot she keeps the keys to the filing cabinet. 

She wants to be buried with the stuffed duck her parents bought her when she was about to undergo surgery as a child. It’s deep brown and still soft, with an evergreen head and beady eyes. And she wants to be buried with her parents, in the same memorial lawn with grass wet and crisp enough to make my legs itch and short iron fences separating the different gravestones, different lives.