Today, November 11, is the anniversary of my father’s death. If you’ve known me for any length of time, you know that he was 54 and I was 26.

Do I talk too much of the dead? Does my preoccupation interfere with their peace? Or yours?

As if my need could disturb the dead! My need makes my hair stand on end but likely goes unnoticed by them.

My need sends me to the banks of the River Styx, hoping to snag the ferryman Charon on his way back from the Underworld. Does he ever give updates, that guy? Might he know, for instance, whether the young one’s spirit hovers in Colorado because his lost love has a birthday in two weeks? Another date to mark — among many that impart dread and sorrow.

She was here on her so-called “golden birthday.” The 24th when she turned 24, whenever that was – two years ago? Maybe three. I’ll have to check my camera roll. Talk about trips to the Underworld! That’s a scroll that can peel off my skin and leave me raw and begging for mercy. My golden birthday, by the way, was in the mid-60s when I turned nine.

My maternal grandmother, Alice Healy Jacques, offered up two middle names: mine, Alice, and Danny’s, Healy. The anniversary of her death is in three days, November 14th.

The first funeral I ever attended was her husband’s. To his wake, I wore a navy blue knit dress with the prettiest picot lace-edged collar. I might’ve worn white gloves too, as one did back then. I recall feeling an irrepressible need to laugh, all while trying to appear pious in front of the coffin. He was bald, my grandpa, and named Albert.

At his bedside before he died he thought I was Arlene, confirmation that, yes indeed, I took after my mother’s younger sister. She’s the one, Arlene, who told me how shocked she was as a child to discover when visiting a friend that other parents didn’t call each other “Al” – Al for Albert and Al for Alice.

My other grandmother was named Alice too, so I guess I hit the Ancestor bonanza with my middle name

I barely knew either of them.

Alice Healy Jacques looked like Vera, which is part of why I loved that British mystery series so much. She could recite poetry, my Nana. She’d scrunch up her face and go.

Nana could not cook though. My mother liked to say, “She couldn’t boil an egg if her life depended on it.” I don’t know if Alice was born in County Cork or Brooklyn, but that’s a story for another day.

My other grandma, Alice Mallon, lived in Queens and walked to Mass early every morning, her nylons swishing between her thighs as she went. She was wry and probably funny, but with a humor geared to adults which meant that to us kids she seemed a little scary, maybe even mean.

My father, the youngest of four, was born the year of the great crash. His mother blithely announced on some occasion or other (with a little chuckle no doubt) that had abortion been legal, she would’ve aborted my father. Reminder: this woman said the rosary morning, noon, and night.

Such a sentiment shocked even the young girl I was then, but you should know that my cynical rebuke of Catholicism began very early.

Not before my first Communion, though. The year of second grade, I was too enamored with the delicate, lacy veils, the pearl-buttoned white gloves, the gilt-edged missals, and those rosary beads, approximating the prettiest of necklaces. Maybe it was the year after, although I have never forgotten how outraged I was at Father Chamberlain when he bellowed to a church full of eight-year-olds about to receive their First Communion that we were all on the road to hell.

Jesus! And I had to wonder recently at a gathering about indigo and ancestral memory why I have yet to feel much of a call to contact my forebears?

My father was funny and liked to fish, just like my dead son, which is one reason why I’ve wondered whether he might’ve been one of the souls to meet Danny on the other side. They would understand each other — knowing of the great solace offered by time spent alone in nature where the music of rushing water is the only prayer required. Maybe my dad would’ve laughed at my son’s strict catch and release practices and asked, “Have you ever smelled a trout being sautéed in brown butter?”

Is food or appetite or hunger anything departed souls even bother to talk about?

November is a month for the dead — veterans, the growing dark, mood and melancholy, etc. But I do now need to ask: what month going forward for me will not be for the dead?