Yeah that's possibly my misread here's how I got to that conculusion:
"You could have gone out and bought a new pair, Jay" - even though he sometimes still reminded me of when I was a kid, and gave my mother an old book from my room in lieu of a birthday present."
Since the narrrator refered to my mother here and then this immediately followed:
Perhaps he's been storing the blue jeans disgrace until the appropriate moment, but a year has now passed since that funeral day, he lives away from home and doesn't often call, so I don't know.
I took that funeral day to be distinct from this funeral day they were preparing for so I placed it a year in the past.
Then:
When my father married Susanna, the woman whose funeral we were now preparing for
I took this to mean that Susanna was a step-mother and that the funeral was a second funeral. I was using the "a year had passed" and the "now preparing for" as time cues.
It may be simply me but that's where I got off track from your intent.
"You could have gone out and bought a new pair, Jay" - even though he sometimes still reminded me of when I was a kid, and gave my mother an old book from my room in lieu of a birthday present."
Since the narrrator refered to my mother here and then this immediately followed:
Perhaps he's been storing the blue jeans disgrace until the appropriate moment, but a year has now passed since that funeral day, he lives away from home and doesn't often call, so I don't know.
I took that funeral day to be distinct from this funeral day they were preparing for so I placed it a year in the past.
Then:
When my father married Susanna, the woman whose funeral we were now preparing for
I took this to mean that Susanna was a step-mother and that the funeral was a second funeral. I was using the "a year had passed" and the "now preparing for" as time cues.
It may be simply me but that's where I got off track from your intent.
The secret of poetry is cruelty.--Jon Anderson