Follow-Up on Lydia Davis Text - How Shall I Mourn Them?

Following our conversation about the "Letter to a Funeral Parlor" this morning, I was in particular intrigued by the amount of exquisite attention she pays to word choice and how this play on words served as a way of mourning and commemorating her father, an English professor. I started flipping through the book from her Collected Stories and came across this particular piece titled "How Shall I Mourn Them?" To me, it shares similarities to our conversation about memory and the outlet through which she chooses to connect with people who have passed. She questions if adopting their particular practices would do justice to their life. 

Further, I am particularly interested in the preservation of anonymity in this piece, as she refers to particular habits these people once practiced but refers to them by what I perceive to be the first letter of their name. This greatly contrasts to the piece we read this morning, as it was extremely clear she was trying to do justice in acknowledging her father. Who is she commemorating or mourning in this piece? Or does she keep it more or less anonymous to give the readers more agency in determining how they choose to mourn for others in their own lives?

Going back and connecting this to the idea of whether or not her pieces are indeed "stories," I would also like to point out how structured this entire piece is. When I see this, I would relate it more to a poem than a story, perhaps simply due to its repetition in sentence structure (Shall I...., like ...?). I would love to hear your thoughts on this, as I am particularly drawn to how this piece can be connected to the letter we read this morning but also how this could serve as further insight in understanding if her pieces follow what we regard as standard conventions for stories. I have attached the pages of the story below!