Back at the apartment, Clare and I went to Jay’s closet to choose his final ensemble. I rubbed the fabric of a plaid Paul Stuart sport jacket, the one he wore to a school cocktail party. The one he was wearing when I fell asleep on his shoulder at A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway. I pulled a sleeve to my nose, inhaling deeply.
I stroked a tawny suede vest. I sorted through a rack of trousers, mostly gray flannel, all arranged neatly on their wooden hangers. I gazed at the belts hanging from brass hooks—black and brown leather, a few western-style, with ornate buckles…Jay selected his outfits with such care, and now here I was, hoping I’d pick something he’d approve of.
I told Clare I wanted Jay to wear khakis so he’d be comfortable. I also told her I was worried that if we chose the Paul Stuart blazer, he might be hot in the summer. We allowed ourselves to laugh at the thought.
Should he wear his wedding ring? I wondered. Ultimately, I decided to put it on a chain around my neck to keep him close to me. Although I did pick out a tiny brass bugle he had taught Ellie to play and a stuffed bunny of Carrie’s to go in the casket to keep him company. I also put in a poem I wrote thanking him for loving me, loving us, and for always making me feel “safe, sane and secure.” I’d felt so protected in his presence, whether he was giving me a reassuring play-by-play of what a plane was doing during turbulence or positioning himself between me and the street when we strolled down the sidewalk despite the fact that mud-splattering horse-drawn carriages were few and far between.
THE WAKE WAS held on the third floor of Campbell’s, where the line snaked around the corner. At one point, the overloaded elevator dropped to the basement, leaving the shaken occupants to take the stairs. It was a strange assortment of friends and family and the world of media and politics, some who knew and loved Jay and some probably hoping to be mentioned in Page Six, the juicy （if not always accurate） New York Post gossip column.
In the middle of it all, the archbishop of New York, Cardinal O’Connor, a big personage in the city, glided in, his white vestments flowing behind him. Wendy and I just looked at each other, our eyes as big as Communion wafers. Could this get any weirder? The strange high-profile-ness of it all drove home such a humbling lesson: Grave illness doesn’t care how well known you are, how powerful your connections, how big your salary. We’re all made of the same flesh and blood and bone that keeps working or turns against us for reasons even the most brilliant scientists don’t fully understand. A successful career had given me so much, but it couldn’t help me here.
I was intent on having the funeral reflect the many sides of Jay, the man I had imagined growing old alongside, even though “till death do us part” would come just six months shy of our ninth anniversary. I thought that if I hadn’t always shown him how much I loved him in life, perhaps I could show it by giving him the perfect send-off.
Judy Collins sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “Amazing Grace,” a cappella. I asked Jay’s reenactor buddy Todd Kern to reach out to some of the others in the Stonewall Brigade to see if they’d come to the service in uniform, which Jay would have loved—especially the sight of them walking down Park Avenue in full military regalia.
The Mass was held at St. Ignatius, just a few blocks from our apartment, a house of worship neither of us had ever set foot in. I selected two Bach pieces I loved and the Navy Hymn to play as people were taking their seats. Jay’s dad said “On Eagle’s Wings” would wreck him, so we didn’t include it. During the service, people passed around a framed photo of Jay holding Carrie in a swimming pool when she was just a few months old. I saw Rosie O’Donnell crying as she handed it to someone in front of her.
In her eulogy, Clare spoke about Jay’s sense of fairness and compassion for the underdog. “When Jay was in the fifth grade, he took it upon himself to teach an awkward and unpopular boy the proper technique for throwing a baseball in an attempt to help him be more readily accepted by his peers.” His brother Chris poked fun at Jay’s idiosyncratic musical tastes. “While my friends were listening to Jimmy Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and the Allman Brothers with their brothers, I was stuck listening to such classics as Scott Joplin’s greatest hits, ‘John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt,’ and John Philip Sousa’s ‘Marches to Dress By.’”
David Kiernan told a funny story about Jay’s strategy for attracting women at bars during their single days. “Girls would walk by. Jay warned me not to act too interested. If you’re interested and they make eye contact, don’t look back right away. About a year later…Jay spotted Katie. That night, Jay moved.” Geraldo Rivera said Jay “had the sharpest legal mind TV ever saw.”