The worst part of swimming was always when they pulled the trigger.

She knew intellectually this was about making a sound so loud everyone could hear it, above all the family dins on the sidelines, and all the private anxieties echoing at the starting line. She knew it was about making sure everyone had possession of the same moment, about making absolutely sure they could all start at once, together: Dive in, swim safely across. Focus on the absence of the sound until the sound came, and they could begin. She knew that. But did it have to be such a scary, awful sound?

The day they put Marlene in the ground, next to Eddie, nobody wanted to admit why they were there, because they thought it was a tragedy. That disease lurked in her house and the shadows and eventually came for her; that she was swallowed by the abyss. They thought that her illness had finally betrayed her. Tomorrow was the last day of summer and the days were getting shorter, and nobody wanted to admit that Marlene died because something sick and scary and unimaginable forced her to pull back the hammer and press steel to her head and squeeze the trigger. Forced her.

Only Cathy understood that Marlene was the victor, that night. She didn't get killed by the disease, she killed the disease. It was her last act of will and a testament to that will that she chose the moment for herself, after she could no longer trust the world. Marlene sent a letter to her daughters, it arrived the day after she died, and what it said was that she wanted to go, now, because she couldn't trust herself not to do something stupid. Marlene was mostly pride, they thought, because they couldn't imagine that much strength.

Marlene arranged her funeral for herself, in those days leading up to everything. Balloons and polka music, lottery scratch-offs passed like appetizers. Cathy thought it was wonderful, because Cathy saw choice. Everybody else saw defeat. Paul saw his wife dying in slow motion, refusing treatment, letting hope poke out its head every now and again -- as a tree, sometimes; sometimes it took the form of a hive of bees -- but standing still when she should be running.

"She shot herself in the fucking head, this is not beautiful."

Maybe he was right.

The daughters smiled out at the congregation, and took their measure, and explained that Marlene hated polka music. That those who knew and loved her knew this was a lie: "She said the only way to dance to it makes you look like an asshole," they laugh. Her daughters loved her, but they knew what she was about. They couldn't imagine her strength, until they saw it. Her harshness, for what it was; her love that never looked quite like love. "But every time my dad pulled out his accordion, it always brought a smile to her face."