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Sitting at a desk in my mother’s house to write, my daughter gave me perhaps thirty seconds before she followed me and crawled into my lap.  As I pecked away, now onehanded – whenever I tried to use my right hand it would get in her face a bit, and she energetically would thrust it away – she started picking cards off the desk, sorting and shuffling them over and over.  When my attention wandered, I saw that they were laminated mass cards, of the sort given out at wakes.  Little Mary enjoyed playing with them, moving them from her hands to her lap and back again, sorting and shuffling them, running her fingertips along their edges, putting them to her lips.  I looked at the names – these were the men and women I grew up with.  Neighbors, family friends, my father, my grandmother.  How strange it is to see a new generation grow amidst these reminders of the ones who are gone.