CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
A brief funeral ceremony is to be conducted at the graveside by a humanist celebrant. “We don’t want a priest,” your father said when he told you about the arrangements on the phone. “We have never been religious.”
It’s true. Your family has never been religious. It’s a political family. And you are not religious, but you somehow do want a priest: white robes fluttering in the wind, arms raised high as he says, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
Your father is sombre in a black overcoat, and your mother is dressed in an old navy blue suit you haven’t seen her wear in years. She walks behind your father, arm-in-arm with Angelika, a young nurse from the old people’s home who was fond of Jürgen. You know they arrived separately, but for a brief moment they look as though
