A year after the death, you throw a gathering. People claim grief needs a rotation of seasons—one summer, one autumn, one winter, and one spring—before the ache loosens its grip. If you endure the year, you mark the moment with a celebration. When a man dies, his widow coordinates the tribute. When a woman dies, the eldest daughter steps forward to organize the gathering. If there are no daughters, the wife of the oldest living son takes on the task. If the deceased woman left no children, there is no celebration.
Because you are her only child, her aunt stated matter‑of‑factly, the responsibility for the party rests on you. Don’t panic; you have nearly the entire year, which should be enough time. I will assist you as much as I can, but the invitations must come from you, you must prepare the food and ready your home. People need to see that you are honoring your mother’s memory. She was my sister, but she was your mother. The aunt paused. I know we laid her to rest only a few weeks ago, but preparations for the one‑year ceremony can take weeks, even months, which is why I’m telling you now. It’s a big deal. Some people loved your mother, some did not; invite them all. Start at noon; midday is the most auspicious, and keep it going until the last guest leaves, no matter how late. There are numerous details, of course; everything is very specific, and the rules are ancient and, you know, important. Set up an altar with long taper candles, flowers, photographs. Everyone sits so they can see one another when they talk about the deceased. There are times to speak and times to be silent, and times for people to cry, and even a moment to wail. Tell your neighbors to expect loud noises; tell them it’s part of our custom, and please, do not call the police.
Heti held a pencil above a blank sheet of paper. Her aunt’s voice came through the tiny holes at the bottom of her cell phone, carried from dozens of miles away into the coils of her ear as she sat in her small office at the accounting firm. Her aunt pressed on. Flowers at every table, enough chairs, a full lunch, a full dinner, fruit, chocolate, nuts, cakes, tea—nothing preprepared or catered, it’s disrespectful. When your grandmother died, we had huge gatherings for the third-, seventh-, and fortieth-day ceremonies, and by the time of the one‑year anniversary, people expected a real party. Our house was so full you couldn’t find a place big enough to hold your plate up to your face to eat. I remember our hallway was so crammed I had to push past the men’s big stomachs and the women’s soft hips just to get to the bathroom. All those bodies in honor of my grandmother, all that life come together . . .
Her aunt paused and then continued. Our house smelled like cologne and perfume for days. A complete success. That’s how you do it. Open your home and make people comfortable with the right food and songs and sayings so they can think about your mother, really remember her and mourn.
There was another pause, and Heti waited for more instructions, but nothing came.
I know what you are thinking, her aunt finally muttered. This is all too old‑fashioned, too much work, too much ritual. Not your responsibility.
The notepad was no longer blank. Heti had drawn a series of orbs of various sizes, at odd distances from each other. She shaded some, striped some and pockmarked a few. Perfect circles, balls, spheres adrift somewhere in her imagination. She wanted to speak but the sketching calmed her into silence and she sat quietly as her aunt went on, anger now lacing the edges of the old woman’s voice.
You can always do it your way, or their way, her aunt said. Like when Avery’s mom died. No funeral, no ceremony, they just burned the body and were done with it. If that’s good enough for my son‑in‑law’s mother, maybe it’s good enough for your mother, who sacrificed so much for you.
Heti cleared her throat to speak but her aunt cut in quickly. They threw a birthday party three weeks after she died! A birthday party. Three weeks! For the little niece, what’s her name? You remember, you were there, your girls were there, your mother and I came to pay our respects, to say a few nice things about the dead woman, mother to them all, but when we saw they hired a clown neither of us could say a thing. And that man, Avery’s father, drinking beer and asking your mother what kind of perfume she was wearing with his wife of fifty years dead for two minutes? We were shocked. But we kept to ourselves. Who were we to them? Distant relatives, nobodies. We sat on a bench and watched the grandchildren make up a game called ghost tag, where the person who is “it” is Death and when Death touches you, you become a ghost and have to play the rest of the game with your eyes closed. And your mother, God rest her soul, pointed to the yard full of cousins walking around like zombies, tripping on tree roots, running into tables, laughing and crying, and said, See, this is what happens when you do not mourn the dead, they come back any way they can.
The orbs on the notepad began to resemble planets and Heti added rings to some and clusters of stars around others. She listened to her aunt’s breath like the challenge it was, to speak, to acknowledge that across town this woman still lived and in living kept alive all the old ways and beliefs, all the ancestral understandings of shame and honor, heaven and disrepute.
A long silence passed. Her aunt cleared her throat and started to speak in the poetic register she saved for the special occasions when she wanted to transcend her small stature, thick accent and old age. Who are we to speak of loneliness, who are we to talk of isolation, when we each have a mother to call us into this life and a child to carry us out?
Then she shifted into a gentle tone. I know you are a busy woman, Heti. You have the girls, a big office job, a lot of responsibilities and powers, but—her aunt slowed—as the only daughter there is no one else who can honor your mother in the traditional way. It’s important for you, important for all of us.
In the crater of a distant moon Heti shaded a few boulders and outlined a dried‑up lake and then answered her aunt. I can host the anniversary party. I’ll do it like you say.
Her aunt’s sigh came through the earpiece like a gale. Thank you, Heti, that’s a good girl. You are becoming such a good girl.
Heti put the phone down and stared at her notepad, hypnotized by the galactic sketch where she now imagined a neat line of mothers and children marching from planet to planet, moon to moon, in transit across the universe. Outside the window warm air moved the leaves on the branches while around her, phones rang, and men and women answered Helios Accounting, Entertainment’s Finest. Heti stared at the drawing in front of her and muttered whatever under her breath. Whatever to the silly old poem and whatever to the ceremony and all its stupid little details and whatever to all the rules for daughters. It was the same whatever she forced herself to mutter at the horror of finding her mother’s thin body, dead in her bed, her right arm hung down off the mattress, fingers curled over nothing, her jaw open and full of stagnant air. The whatever that locked life in the truths of biology, chemistry, physics, far from the hysteria and superstitions of her heart, her family, history. The same whatever she used when people said I’m so sorry when she told them her dad died when she was three or four. Whatever, it’s fine. Respect your elders. Be a good girl. Whatever. Follow the rules. Whatever. At the funeral Heti stood beside her mother’s body and hugged and kissed the mourners who said your mother your mother your mother and Heti thought, yes, she is dead, yes, it is as it is, and tried to think whatever but could not because her knees kept buckling beneath her and she had to use all of her mind and body to brace against the coffin just to stand.
Now life was like that; some days fine and firm and full of whatever, while other days the hoarse bark of the neighbors’ dog or a friend’s grim diagnosis and her body succumbed to an emotional gravity that pulled her into a free fall. In those moments she thought of Jupiter. Jupiter of our solar system. Jupiter from the pages of a children’s book she read and reread to her girls when they were young. Imagine, the author wrote in a dreamy tone, a planet made only of gas! Just hydrogen and helium, with no land, no ocean, no rocks, only clouds upon clouds. Just clouds! her girls screamed as they grabbed her arms. But where do you stand? What can you land on? How can you even be there? Heti tried to explain to her girls that either you fall and fall, or you figure out how to fly, become a bird or a spaceship or a bit of gas, but their imaginations always raced to the worst and their bodies shivered with fear. Really, Mommy? Really? There’s nowhere to land? Yup, only falling, Heti would say, and shrug her shoulders and tease them with a silly rhyme she made up to ease their panic and that came to haunt her since her mother’s death. No place to land, no place to roam. No place to bury your old dome.
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From Female Life on Planet Earth by Laleh Khadivi. Copyright © 2026 by Laleh Khadivi. Excerpted by permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
