My mother had not been invited to the memorial service, which concluded with a family dinner at Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten. We sat in a private back room, in neckties and in silence, the latter awkward but expressly desired by my stepmother, and disturbed only by the bevy of liveried waiters who announced and described the courses in advance, in a gimmicky roundelay. It was abysmally, depressingly bourgeois, these loudly and proudly proclaimed lobster tails on pea essence, these Chateaubriands, these basil sorbets.