I suspect that the study offered other perks of monitoring and treatment which had led my mother, who loved freebies of all kinds, to insist that my father volunteer for it. Some years before he died, my father had participated in a study of memory and aging at Washington University, and one of the perks for participants was a post-mortem brain autopsy, free of charge. I remember putting the report back into its envelope without reading any further. I remember translating grams into pounds and pounds into the familiar shrink-wrapped equivalents in a supermarket meat case. The brain (it began) weighed 1,255 gm and showed parasagittal atrophy with sulcal widening. I remember leaving the candy, the card, and the ornament in my living room, taking the autopsy report into my bedroom, and sitting down to read it. I remember the bright-gray winter light that morning. Goodbars, one hollow red filigree heart on a loop of thread, and one copy of a neuropathologist’s report on my father’s brain autopsy. Louis, a Valentine’s package containing one pinkly romantic greeting card, two four-ounce Mr. On an overcast morning in February, 1996, I received in the mail from my mother, in St.
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