Watchful women

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When my mother died early on a spring evening in 1993, the ladies of the garden club and the bridge club gathered around my family to stand sentinel over the old-fashioned ritual of paying calls on the bereaved. My parents lived in a Southern city, in a Federal-period house, in a neighborhood called Olde Towne. The formal, high-ceilinged living spaces, furnished with antiques from both sides of the family, might have left you wondering what year you had walked into—had it not been for the living room’s custom armoire, which matched the crown moldings and held a color television.

But the armoire doors were uncharacteristically closed. So was the door at the end of the long, wide hallway—a door I had never known my parents to shut. It led to the kitchen they modernized in 1974, hoping to create some informal family space. On the days between Mother’s death on Saturday and her funeral the following Wednesday, the public rooms felt calm and cool and still. From nine in the morning until late in the afternoon, the ladies took turns answering the door. They perched on the Empire period sofa in the front hall and jumped up at the sound of the bell.