* * *
—
His family will hold a second memorial service for him, in the Philadelphia suburb most of them call home. My sister-in-law calls to tell me that the service will be held in a Unitarian Universalist church. I’m pretty sure that none of the Ameches have ever been in a UU church for a religious service, except for Brian, and he stopped going twenty years ago. I take this decision to be a tribute to Brian, to his erstwhile affection for Unitarians. I suspect it is not a tribute to his fierce aversion to Catholicism and, in either case, I don’t care. I am not as enthusiastic as my sister-in-law expects, I think, and it’s a quick, awkward conversation. Later there is another one, from the other sister-in-law, who explains to me that although their beloved Father Bob wanted nothing more than to accommodate the well-connected Ameches （in the Seventies, the Ameches met with the pope, and the girls wore lace mantillas longer than their skirts and the group photo is amazing）， the Catholic Church higher-ups would not allow a memorial service for Brian in a church. I think that perhaps it was because he chose his death, but I am assured that the Church, if not all for suicide, no longer holds it against the dead person or their family and it’s not necessarily an impediment to Church burial. I wonder if it’s me, and my mother-in-law laughs a little and says, with some embarrassment, that although Father Bob himself had no objection, his boss did worry that other people—more extreme members of the Catholic Church—might read of Brian’s active support of Planned Parenthood and that those extreme people might behave badly. So, Unitarian Universalist church it will be, not as Brian would have wished （Yale Bowl, Sterling Library, the Trolley Trail near our house）， but certainly nothing he would have objected to.
At the Pennsylvania service, almost all of the remarks are about Brian as a child and a teenager. Lots of love, as he said once on a trip home to Philly, but I’ve been long gone.
Brian’s life as an adult was not known to that crowd, but my mother-in-law’s friends hug and kiss me and tell me what a handsome and lovely young man he was, and I bask. A lot of men in their sixties come up to me in the country club afterward, a steady stream of them following the service, to tell me about Brian’s kindness and skill and smarts, even at eighteen. It pleased me and would have pleased him. “No one would knock you down harder or put out his hand to help you up faster,” one man said, and I hugged him. I’ve picked an urn for Brian’s ashes （skipping the ones with the Yale Y, the heron catching a fish, the hawk） and have a second one prepared for Yvonne. In one of our weekly conversations, she tells me that she didn’t expect to love it, but she does. （Brian and I were not a morbid couple, but I have the ashes of both parents and my beloved Grandpa Bloom—I found his ashes in a Chock Full o’ Nuts can in my father’s old filing cabinet—in urns in our living room. I am happy to have them with me, and occasionally, when there’s a big family celebration, one of the kids will move my mother’s urn into the dining room, where the party is.） In December, I will put the beautiful cobalt-blue urn for Brian in a box in my closet for a very long time, hidden away, until I find the linden tree I want and can plant it on the little hill near our house and dig a hole for the urn at the tree’s base. All spring, I’ll study pictures of linden trees （popular in myths as a symbol of grace and protection） and then I’ll put one in the yard and put a bronze plaque for Brian on the boulder near it.
* * *
—
After the service in Stony Creek, when all the guests and Ameches leave our house, it’s dark. Everyone gets out of their funeral clothes. It is me, my children, and their families, and my friends Bob and Jack. I don’t miss anyone or wish anyone was there who is not, except Brian.
Saturday, September 15, 2007, Durham, Connecticut
Our wedding day. My mother isn’t there to see it, and that is my only grief. The last time she was in the hospital, Brian dropped me off and went to park. My mother waved me into her room and kissed me. Is Brian coming up? she said. When I said yes, she practically pushed me off the bed and began firmly and pleasantly directing me in how best to help her: bed jacket, comb, blush, and lipstick, please. Hairspray. Hurry, please. By the time Brian came to her door, she was in full Greer Garson and sent me to get tea for both of them. Oh, she would have said over breakfast on our wedding day, isn’t this lovely? Aren’t you gorgeous? Isn’t he the handsomest thing? She would have appreciated that, just as with my first wedding, my hair has been done up in a ghastly mid-century Priscilla Presley updo, and after the stifled gasps of my children and of my groom-to-be, who says, Wow, I’ve never seen you look…that way, there’s nothing to do but thank the updo lady, brush it out （hard）， and stick a few bobby pins in it, just like last time.
Everyone who should be here is here. My father is frail and kindly, and both things are still a surprise to all of us. My sister and her family arrive early and support my father on all sides. My older daughter and her fiancé, later to be her husband, my dear Corey, who will arrive from Los Angeles just minutes before the ceremony （and Eden and Ivy not yet thought of）。 My son, Alex, and his wife, married just the week before （and Isadora not even imagined）。 My younger daughter and a girlfriend （not the girlfriend who will become my beloved daughter-in-law Jasmine, and Zora not yet even a light in anyone’s eye）。 I am in the midst of my brief TV life, and my agent and the star of that show and my producer are all there. My producer, who will be there for me, still, at every inch of Brian’s life and death, has ordered us an extraordinary wedding cake: translucent turquoise and silver sugar bubbles, cascading down the silver and blue cake, pooling around the bottom layer onto a large glass plate, like the Milky Way. Brian has approved every aspect of the menu, huddling happily with the chef for a couple of hours, and the day before, the two big men come to me grinning and say, We added a carving station, and of course they did. I have gathered up every large scarf, shawl, and pashmina I have, because it is a little chillier than I had hoped, and I’ve put baskets of wraps on the front and the back lawn. It would please my mother—because putting out baskets of wraps to keep your guests warm is clearly making an effort.
Friends from all pieces of our lives are there: some neighbors who’d disapproved of our scandalous beginnings and come around （we had both been with other people. We didn’t behave well. We fell in love and left our partners. We didn’t slink out of town, and we glowed like radium）; all my shrink-ish friends; lots of Ameches （who were hesitant about standing under a chuppah with a Unitarian minister, but game）; friends from Brian’s high school and college days; my friend Kay （the one who’ll accompany me from Zurich to Newark） and her daughter, whom I’ve known since before she was born; one of our favorite couples, who will divorce long before Brian dies, and the half of the couple we keep will write him the most beautiful platonic love letter ever; my daughters’ pediatrician; Brian’s friends from fishing, and conservation, and local politics; our mother-daughter travel agents, who have become friends but whom I never tell why we stop traveling; my dearest people from Random House, who will become Brian’s biggest fans （at one in-house dinner, as people are showing enthusiastic support for a new book, I say: I know that when you contemplate sending me out on tour, you all wish you could send Brian instead—and no one disagrees）; my most brilliant friends and my kindest; the friends who were delighted by Brian and me and the ones who were dubious, and worse; friends whom I loved then and love now, some of whom I will rarely see again, after this day, because time passes.