My daughter asked why Grandma’s hands looked so small in the coffin

Dear Delyara, My daughter is eight. At my mother’s funeral today, she stood beside the coffin for a long time. Then she whispered, “Grandma’s hands look smaller.” I looked, and she was right. Mum’s hands did look small. Those hands had seemed enormous when I was a child. They buttoned my coat, slapped flour from bread dough, held my forehead when I was sick, pointed at me when she was angry, and once carried two shopping bags and a sleeping toddler at the same time because she refused to make two trips. In the coffin, they were folded neatly over each other like something delicate. My daughter asked whether dead people shrink. I said no, but I understood what she was seeing. The power had gone out of them. Mum had arthritis near the end, and I had started opening jars for her. I hated watching her hands become dependent because I had spent my whole life believing they could manage anything. Tonight, I keep looking at my own hands. They are beginning to look like hers. Same knuckles, same veins. My daughter fell asleep holding one of them. I wonder if someday she will stand beside me and be surprised by how small mine have become.