The contract (or, in its own parlance, “approval memorandum”) for my great grandmother’s casket, presumably supplied by the Mancini Funeral Home in Amsterdam. Mancini wasn’t big on branding his correspondence, apparently. The woman buried in it is something of a mystery to us, even though she was my mother’s grandmother and alive and living nearby until I was three. We don’t know her maiden name or even, for certain, her national origin. She apparently never learned much (or perhaps any) English, and wasn’t the warm and engaging old country grandmother type. More the scary old lady who sat in the corner and never said anything type, from what my mother can remember. This receipt is the only evidence we have for where she is buried.