The speaker remembers a relative, addressed as "you," whose funeral he came home to after summer camp. The poem moves between that memory and the present, where the speaker is a student paying fees at a university. Along the way it gathers a family's troubles: broken marriages, a stay in a state hospital, a grandmother with a failing leg and bad dreams, and cousins who grabbed the dead man's paintings while the speaker held back. The most painful moment is a childhood one. The man knelt on the sidewalk, begged the boy to come to him, and the boy ran inside, afraid.
The speaker seems to feel grief mixed with guilt and fear. He worries that "sickness" runs in the family and that they will all "die quietly mad." The mood is bleak but hushed, and the plain, unpunctuated voice makes it feel like a confession. The ending suggests that painful memories fade, and that those who keep records are not welcome.