Try to wear something flattering but simple and not flashy. You don’t see these people often and won’t see them again for another 10 years.

Invite all the people who are the most supportive for you. Invite your boyfriend, whose hand you can hold. Your children’s father who knew your mom so well, and can socialize easily. Invite your son because just being in his presence is a balm.

Pick a John O’Donohue poem on grief to read because you only found out a week ago your mom was sick and now she’s lying in a coffin full of embalming fluid. You will be numb and it will seem like you don’t care if you have to talk about your mom. In any case you had a difficult relationship with her and in some ways it’s a relief she died and didn’t have to live another 10 years as the semi-recluse she had become because of her traumatic childhood.

Read the poem. It’s a good one. You will choke up reading it, which is about the amount of emotion you can manage right now and won’t seem inappropriate. Not such a contrast to all her grandchildren crying as much as they are.

Watch your dad as he talks to his siblings and wonder who he is. Know that you will now be spending more time with him.

Be sure to feel the lightness you do around your godmother. She was someone who loved you as a child and still does and she never hurt you even a bit and isn’t that a lovely thing.

When you see your cousin Christine whose back you traced lines on while you fell asleep together as five-year-olds as your parents and relatives all got drunk, yell “I love you!” when you realize it’s her, or say it together somehow spontaneously, even though she looks nothing like how you remember and you haven’t seen her for thirty years and she isn’t someone you have anything in common with now. You will mean it when you say it.

Realize at some point that you are in too much shock to even know you are in shock.

Eat the little sandwiches served at the reception.