She placed one of her best hats on her mother's head in the coffin. How pretty her mom looked in that hat! Her mom would have liked to see herself in the mirror with it. Not much of a hat, more like a fascinator, a small cascade of lavender feathery flowers with a net containing them on the base.
"Are you going to bury her with the hat or do you want to take it back with you?" What a stupid question to make to a grieving daughter that had just traveled for 14 hours to be there just in time for the burial!
While she admired her mom in the coffin, her daughter approached and sang a mournful tune. A beautiful voice that no one besides her had heard before. An improbable Italian tune that amazed everyone at the funeral home. Never again would anyone hear her daughter singing like that. Her daughter died two years later, without ever singing in public after that.
She remembers the scene as she puts on a winter hat. Late nights, when both she and her daughter couldn't sleep, both haunted by different demons, each one in a separate room, she would hear her daughter practicing tunes. She yearned for talking to her about it, to share with her what she knew about singing and music, but doing so would only open an even big chasm between the two.
The constant buzzing in her ears now dampens the sounds of the memories she might have in the deep recesses of her brain.
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