In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss(43)

Early in the morning, I drive over to my friend’s house, who is also my hairdresser, and he puts my hair up. I could sit there, being loved and straightened and back-combed and sprayed, for hours. There is no place I’d rather be. Some of my dearest friends are coming, and some are not. I find that I have absolutely no bad feelings about those who don’t. They have loved me and supported me and done the same for Brian, or not, and it doesn’t matter anymore.

The memorial service is across the street from our house, at the library. I love the library. The librarians are the way librarians should be: devoted to the books, kind but firm with the public. It has been awkward to arrange the service, since I knew we wanted it and I knew when we wanted it but I could not imagine saying to Alice, our librarian: Brian plans to die on January 30; could we book the library for February 8, between art shows and the yoga class? I don’t remember how it comes to pass that the library is indeed booked for the service, but it is. My assistant and our friend, Jennifer, has probably arranged it, as she arranged the memorial cards. We are not having a Mass and we are not Catholic and we don’t have a parish, but nevertheless, the memorial cards are a big hit. The card has a picture on one side of Brian, looking summer-sharp in his sunglasses, and a soaring hawk and few lines of Rumi on the other (What is the body? Endurance. What is love? Gratitude. What is hidden in our chests? Laughter. What else? Compassion). Everyone takes a card or two and I am a convert to them.

My friend Betsey will cater, because I cannot imagine a memorial service without food. (I am that kind of Jew—I cannot imagine a gathering of people that doesn’t include food, and when I arrive at the WASP-y events at which you get a few sips of Riesling and a Ritz cracker, I am always disappointed, of course, but then a little bit impressed.) I’d rather feed people at the library than have everyone come back to the house. I know that some people will come back to the house come hell or high water, but if there is nice food at the library, people who didn’t really know Brian may decide to pass on crossing the street and visiting with us and make the most of the library spread.

I walk over to the library before the service, and it is all muted chaos: Jack cannot figure out the sound system so we can play Bill Evans. There’s a problem with the microphone that the minister needs to use. Betsey tells me that there are not enough glasses. I don’t remember how any of these things are sorted out. I go back to the house and put on more lipstick and I return to the memorial service, granddaughter Isadora in tow. (Eventually the twins will come sit on my lap, as well, and the three of them squirming for space and sobbing over their beloved Babu is a great distraction. If I cried during the service, I’d be surprised to hear about it.)

My daughter Caitlin is at the door to the library, guiding people into the community room. She looks enough like me that for lots of people—our dentist, our former neighbors, a college boyfriend—no other signage is needed. People will come up to her for the next hour, to cup her face in their hands, to look at her version of my face and turn left, as if she’s an actual sign, to ask for help in finding a seat, shedding a coat. In twenty minutes, Caitlin will have to move out of the lobby because there’s no room, and people will gather, on this sunny Saturday in February, outside on the library lawn and in the corridors within the building, between the kitchen and the restrooms. I never even see the people in the hallways or those standing outside.

The first person I see in the chairs is my editor, Kate, sitting in her elegant, composed way, holding her coat, a manuscript and a pencil on her lap, and editing while she waits, which I find lovely and reassuring. I remember going to the funeral of her husband, Forde, and the whole difficult year after that, and I did wonder how she had managed then, and seeing her in the folding chair, respectfully leaving room for the reserved seats in the front rows, I’m ashamed to remember that at the time I doubt I asked her more than twice about how she was doing. I know I did and said the stupid things that people do and say and I am resolved not to mind what anyone says today, no matter what.

(And there are some doozies, which I find cheering, even in the moment of receiving them. Many people remind me that he was too young, that it was unexpected, that they never knew he had Alzheimer’s, that he surely had some good years left, and that I must be devastated. One person tells me that some days I will feel pretty good and other days, I’ll want to die. Really die, she says.)

I recall my parents’ memorial services, but they were very old people, had outlived most of their friends, and were in assisted living. We had no trouble accommodating everyone in their apartment. I knew that this would not be like that, but I am not prepared for the throngs of people showing up for Brian. My sister and her husband arrive early, and my sister looks vulnerable and ferocious, in her worry for me. People I expect to see and people I never expected to see fill the seats: his book club; his stained-glass teacher; a group of volunteers from Planned Parenthood, where he spent every Saturday morning escorting women from their cars to the clinic, always kind, always restrained, even when he itched to throw a punch at the screaming protestors. (It’s such a great combination of my interests, he said.)

The next group of people to walk in are ten big white men, in navy-blue blazers and Yale ties, bulldogs or crests or Ys. Make way for the small fry, says one man, around Brian’s size, pushing through the other, bigger men. He holds both of my hands and tells me that they all loved Brian. One man tells me he flew in from Arizona, and afterward he heads right back to the airport. Each man pats me or holds my hand and then they line up at the back of the room, shoulder to shoulder, legs apart, his sentinel. There is no transgression among them that I couldn’t forgive.