All That You Leave Behind: A Memoir(44)

Jenny is a small, quiet freshwater lake. It is stocked with fish, and no motorboats are allowed. My dad pushed the canoe out into the water and ordered me to paddle. We started to glide. I gazed out at the lake in front of us. We sat in silence for a while before he began to ask me questions about my life. How was it going with my boyfriend? What sort of things was he interested in? Always the journalist, he sussed this guy out based on what I had to say about him.

We moved toward the end of the lake and considered trying out the inlet path. I lied and told him I had heard it was too shallow this time of year. He mulled it over and agreed we should turn back. I asked him about his life.

“I keep thinking about all the things I want to do. Another book, maybe? But what to write about?” he said earnestly.

“Well, what do you want to write about?”

He paused for just a second. “Maybe Murdoch? I also would love to try and see if I could write fiction.”

“You know you can do anything you want.”

“Hey, isn’t that what I am supposed to be telling you?”

We pulled the canoe up out of the water, and he made me put it on the rack. I protested because it’s a known spider den, but to no avail. We walked up the path and talked about the time, years back, that he and Meagan raced up to the cabin from the lake. An all-star long-distance runner, Meagan was the favorite to win. As they were charging ahead, he claimed she tripped all six feet one inch of him, and he went tumbling. I sincerely doubted that that had happened. While retelling the story, he mimicked the tumble and noticed that his wedding ring was now gone. He had lost weight over the past year, and even his fingers had shrunk. He hung his head and looked as if he might cry.

We both knew that the lake had the ring now. Sometimes the universe takes something, as if by chance.



     My dad’s last summer on Lake Jenny.





25


    The Wake



“You are who you run with.”



My dad had been dead for one day, and I had been given the onerous task of figuring out who to invite to his wake. Jill was tied up with their lawyer, trying to figure things out, as my fifty-eight-year-old father did not have a will. He had died intestate. I combed through my emails with him from just a couple of days earlier. I felt lost in trying to put the list together without his guidance—a feeling I would recognize thousands of times in the coming days.

Who would he want at his wake? I racked my brain for the people he loved, mentored, respected, fought and made up with and fought with again. This “fought” qualifier was important, as he argued with a great many people (myself included). And if you could come to the table, talk it out, and hug after? Well, then you were golden. I knew the obvious people—Sridhar, Ta-Nehisi, Tony, Michael, Fast Eddie, Lena, Erik, Sam, Brett, Liz, and Anthony. But who was I forgetting? I was bound to make a mistake. Only he would have had the power to hone the right list.

We held a powwow at our dining room table, which was covered in a simple silk tablecloth. I ran my fingertips against the threaded leaves embroidered on the silk.

“Should we look through his iPad for contacts?” I threw out.

Madeline was sitting opposite from me. Her curly blond hair fell down against her shoulders. Her eyes were cast downward, and all I could see were her eyelashes. She looked up, her eyes misty.

“No,” she said firmly. I tried to explain to her I was not looking to steal emails but to plan this last party for our dad. She didn’t explain herself but shook her head again. I fell silent and listened as I heard a car pull into the driveway. I automatically looked to the door, expecting him to walk through it.

I searched “Brian Stelter” in my own emails and found a mass email from my dad asking for some Twitter love about being on set of the AMC show Better Call Saul. I copied and pasted the addresses into a new email with the subject line “We Love David Carr! (Arrangements Email).”

On February 13, 2015, at 2:40 P.M., I emailed thirty-nine people the following:


You were so very special to my dad and if you can make it to the services in New York, they are as follows: Wake: Monday 2/16 at Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home (Time TBD but in the evening). Funeral: Tuesday 2/17 at St. Ignatius at 10am. My dad literally did a talk on stage last night before he passed. Always a worker, earner, thinker…he is incredible and we are so, so proud of him. He will be missed endlessly. Please contact me if you have questions.



Many replied with a kind memory about him, but the ever-present response was “Please let me know if there is anything I can do.” I never had an answer for this. Others politely inquired if they could forward the details along or if it was private. That, however, was a question I had a definite answer for.


Please pass to anyone and everyone. He had so many friends. I couldn’t remember them all.



On the day of the wake, our neighbors Bonnie and Eric Baker booked a car for us to travel in style from Montclair to the funeral home on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Jill, Madeline, Meagan, and I arrived early and decided to head to a nearby restaurant. No one had an appetite, so instead we split a bottle of champagne. The glittering droplets, which should signify celebration, not tragedy, made my eyes hurt. I put a Xanax on my tongue and swallowed, knowing I would be unable to take in what came next sober.