The woman received the news and remembered thinking, If anyone has to die, why not my mother? In those days, she said, dead bodies were put on ice and displayed in the family’s home. Her father’s casket had a leak. “I remember the ice melting and dripping and forming a puddle on the floor, and I will remember it until I die,” she said. “I’ll remember seeing it and thinking, Here is my father. He is on ice in the living room.”
