“Third floor.” Another day, another service, for him.
Once off the elevator, Gretchen and I shuffled with a crowd toward the chapel like patrons at a Broadway show. I knew I needed to buck up, but my throat was closing against the smell of expensive perfume, breath mints, and something rancid—grief. There were no open windows in sight.
I stood on tiptoe to check the progress ahead. One by one, people walked through gargantuan wooden doors and disappeared. I recognized a girl with brown curls and rosy doll cheeks as Stewart’s younger cousin—Taryn, maybe? The last time I’d hung out with her, Stewart and I were teenagers and she was maybe eight. Now, so many years later, she appeared to me like a bizarro-land version of herself, face distorted and long.
She was looking down at the carpet. Everyone was looking down at the carpet. And it was so quiet, I had this impulse to shout. Stewart would have felt the same. Momentarily disoriented, I look for him in the crowd. Stewart.
Suddenly, my stomach churned like I was about to throw up. The back of my neck flashed hot beneath my hair; I stopped midstep. Gretchen squeezed my hand, sensing my panic. I tried to focus on the physicality of the moment—her fingers, still cold from outside. All around me, people sniffled; why couldn’t I cry?
And everyone looked familiar. Did I actually recognize Stewart’s relatives or did all families look alike? The great aunts in their oversized necklaces and “funky” colorful glasses; the preteen girls with their barrettes and jersey dresses; the nerdy young male cousins with their side parts and oversized puppy feet.
Ow! I jammed my thigh into the corner of a table, which I then realized held the sign in book. Rubbing my leg and cursing silently, I bent over to add my name. Holding that pen in my hand, I had a perverse urge to sign it like a middle school yearbook: Have a great summer! Wish we’d hung out more! Too late now! Stay cool!
Senior year of high school, fatigued from signing so many yearbooks, Stewart had scrawled something lame and perfunctory in mine and I’d complained, so he wrote a separate note and stuffed it between the pages just before I left to walk home that day: “I am amazed every day that someone as ____ as you, finds me as ____ as you do.” I always remember that line because I knew what he meant. ’Cause I felt the same.
When I stood back up, my gaze rested on a face I did know well: James Hernandez. As children, Jimmy was the third member of our tight trio. Now, he and I locked eyes. A look of recognition crossed his features—those far-set dark eyes and strong brows. We might have been the only two people in the room for our connection in that moment. He nodded, his lips curving into a tiny sad smile, almost like a frown. I nodded back, pressing my lips together. Tears began to flood his eyes. He looked away, then someone taller walked in front of him, obfuscating my view. I wanted to shove that person aside so I could see him again.
Fuck. This was real. My chest tightened.
“There’s Jimmy,” I murmured, though I could no longer see him.
“Where?” snapped Gretchen.
Right. I forgot. They had history, Gretchen and Jimmy. They hated each other, except when they were drunk and making out. I pretended as if I hadn’t heard the question. I didn’t feel like thinking about Jimmy that way right now. I wanted to think about the Jimmy I knew as a child, the one with whom I’d sat on brownstone steps and teased Stewart about some flashy new T-shirt; the one who teamed up with Stewart to mock my love of Joni Mitchell. The one who came to me for girl advice.
Gretchen and I neared the door to the chapel. When we finally entered, I was staring at a ripped seam at the back of some man’s sports jacket. I figured he didn’t know about the tear. People murmured as they slid into pews. The man in front of me moved off to the left down an aisle and, suddenly, before I was prepared, I was standing almost face to face with Helen Beasley.
She had formed a receiving line in a gap between the back and front sections. Of course, even in her most shattering moment, the woman would do things properly. I scanned the room for Stewart’s father, Ted. He was standing at the far end of the space with other men in suits—probably business associates. He was always standing at the edges of rooms with business associates. His expression was impassive. His hair looked especially gray.
“My dad. Everyone’s favorite Care Bear.” I remembered Stewart delivering the line like he’d practiced it, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, a habit that persisted long after the frames were replaced by contacts. We must have been twelve years old or so at that BBQ at their Cape Cod house. We had snuck pineapple juice and spiced rum cocktails. My face was pulsing with warmth from the liquor and fear of being caught, as I reclined in a patio chair with my knees up, scratching a trio of mosquito bites. We watched his father from a distance across the green lawn. We were always watching him from a distance, it seemed to me, to the point where I could barely picture him close up.
Ted Beasley wasn’t an unkind man. But when he bothered to notice, he looked at us kids with confusion, as if he couldn’t figure out where we’d come from or what we wanted. Once, during dinner at their apartment, he’d set out these strange guava disks that he’d brought back from a business trip to China. I was the only one who liked them and told him so—perhaps with more enthusiasm than they merited. He was making an effort, and no one in his family seemed to care. After that, he brought some back for me from every trip to Asia. That was pretty much the extent of our relationship. I couldn’t begin to imagine his experience of Stewart’s death.
Helen was dressed in elegant black, her white bob coiffed. She was always small, but now, instead of delicate, she looked frail. She was talking to a plump, middle-aged woman, one of the great aunts, judging by her eggplant-colored caftan and enormous earrings. The woman was whispering right into her stoic face, barely giving her space to breathe. How horrible to have to be polite on a day like this. For a moment, Helen appeared to buckle, and I almost reached out, but the woman held her up while she righted herself. Then, reluctantly, the woman moved on.
Only a couple people were in front of me now. My heart thumped. I rehearsed possible things to say: “He was the best. I already miss him. How are you holding up? So this is what devastation feels like.” None of it was right. Helen and I didn’t commiserate; we’d never had that rapport. It felt almost condescending to express sympathy to someone who seemed so powerful. I bit my lip, tasting my sticky rose gloss. The two people in front of me delivered some quick words to Helen and moved on as a unit, exposing me.
It was my turn to step forward. Gretchen stepped back, giving us space. Helen wiped her cheeks with the side of her hand and then looked up and met my gaze. Tired blue eyes. Probing blue eyes. For a moment I felt like she couldn’t compute, but then they focused as recognition set in.
“Wren.” She said my name without inflection. Like a fact. Her chin wobbled. Was this bastion of strength about to cry at the sight of me?
“Helen. Mrs. Beasley. I’m—”
A monotone voice rang out, “Please find your seats.”
I turned to see an older gentleman in a yarmulke standing at the podium across the room, speaking into a microphone. “We are a large group in a small space, so please move down if you have an empty seat next to you and allow others to sit.”
I turned back to Helen, who, in that brief pause, had sharpened back into her old self.
“Helen,” I began again.
“Good of you to come, Wren.” She pursed her lips. “Stewart would have wanted you to be here.” Then, before I could reply, she turned and walked in the direction of her seat.
I tracked her with my eyes as she made her way down the aisle, people’s hands grazing her shoulders and arms, offering support, like she was a Torah paraded around at high holidays. She continued all the way to the front, past the pews, and laid her hand on what I realized—with alarm that rang through my entire body—was a shiny casket. Stewart.
I teetered on
my heels. Gretchen caught me. And together we went to find a seat.
Chapter 5
Stewart,
The day you died, I became a funeral planner.
I don’t mean that literally. I’m not planning any Indigo Girls–themed events for you—don’t worry. I did get an email from Auburn Prep’s alumni rep asking me to unearth old photos for a commemorative write-up in the newsletter and on their Facebook page. I know the school was always asking you for favors: tickets to your latest play for the fundraising raffle or an appearance at “career day.” You avoided them like they might enlist you in jury duty or serve you a summons, so the postmortem behavior is consistent in a way you would have appreciated. I couldn’t resist: I sent them that photo of you with the corn dog at Coney Island, which will no doubt get lots of “likes” online. It would get even more if people knew that you ate two more corn dogs and cotton candy after that, then puked in line for the Cyclone. #truth
No, what I mean by “funeral planning” is that I’ve been playing this involuntary game in my head since you’ve been gone: Whenever anyone talks to me—especially about how I’m feeling or more often about how they’re feeling—instead of listening, I find myself choosing lunch spreads and songs for their funerals. What comes to mind is not the event I would want for them so much as what I feel in my bones it should actually be. On the music front, Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and Adele’s “Hello” are often top contenders, although I know you would have chosen something more obscure by a band with “The” in the name.
This make-believe event planning has become constant. For receptions, I envision platters of smoked meats, lox, crudités, and cookies or entire old-school Italian spreads with meatballs and chicken Parmesan (unwieldy for a party, I know, but so delicious!). Did you know that Southerners traditionally bring deviled eggs and Jell-O molds when someone dies? My grandfather’s Mexican nurse dropped off empanadas after Papa passed away. At your funeral reception, I wonder what the catering will be? Something refined, no doubt, courtesy of your mom. Caviar and blinis?
Sometimes, my plans don’t stop at the food. As I lie in bed at night, one knee poking out from beneath my too-warm comforter, I plan touching but funny eulogies for everyone from Gretchen to my dad to our old history teacher, Mr. Harvey. Remember him? The guy with the giant 1970s glasses? I think he would have liked fondue and Jackson Browne’s “Late for the Sky.”
I plan how I’d find out that each person died too: a call, a text, a wildly inappropriate Snapchat, a premature social media post; from a mutual friend, from a family member, from an apologetic police officer showing up at my door.
I plan my reactions. My shock. My dismay. My aftermath. I plan. I plan. I plan for things one cannot plan. Like losing you.
Chapter 6
The service was cookie-cutter and so removed from anything to do with Stewart that I kept having to remind myself why I was there, awash in shaky exhalations and platitudes. Plenty of people were weeping, though, so maybe I was missing something. It wouldn’t be the first time.
An older rabbi—his face lined with broken capillaries—stood at the bimah, punctuating boilerplate statements about losing loved ones too soon with Hebrew we all pretended to follow in the prayer books. Stewart would have been bored out of his mind, knees furiously bouncing. Up front, Helen sat with ramrod posture beside two small children, who I assumed were Stewart’s niece and nephew. I couldn’t tell how any of them were handling things from the back.
Toward the middle of the service, I zoned out and planned the rabbi’s funeral:
cause of death: Heart attack. Too much schmaltz.
after-death ritual: Burial.
service: A small private affair. Large memorial for his congregants a month later at the synagogue—so well-attended that the staff has to take down the temporary ballroom dividers. Presided over by his cantor and a chum from rabbinical school. (The two buddies almost got kicked out after that prank with the yarmulkes in the sukkah hut.)
processional music: Chopin at the family event. At the memorial, the kids from the synagogue singing “Papa Can You Hear Me?” from Yentl.
memorial buffet: Brisket, kugel, three bean salad—the whole megillah. The kind of spread that demands you find a chair and sit down to eat. The kind of meal his grandmother used to make in the shtetl and his wife whipped up when important synagogue donors came to dinner. Maybe rainbow cookies at the end, the kosher ones covered in chocolate with raspberry jam and marzipan in the layers. I pictured him as one of those weird people who actually like those. (That’s not a judgment: I’m one of those weird people too.)
I was jolted out of my reverie as the cantor took center stage. His voice was deep and powerful and commanded attention. Around his neck, he wore a garish tallit, too colorful for the occasion. I pictured him snapping at his wife in a panic that morning, “What do you mean my cream tallit is at the dry cleaner?!”
cause of death: Tragic cancer.
after-death ritual: Burial. Obviously.
service: Medium-sized. Some congregants, some friends and family, definitely the guys from the interfaith softball league.
processional music: “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Mis. (I have a theory that most cantors are frustrated musical theater and opera singers.)
memorial buffet: Traditional. Bagel and lox spread. Not from a high-end appetizing place like Russ & Daughters; just from the bagel place he liked around the corner. Despite ribbing from his coworkers, the guy loved a blueberry bagel. Good ol’ whoever-he-was.
The cantor’s death made me sad to think about. He looked about forty-five years old. I’m sure he had small children. I pictured their confused faces and felt depressed. Then I remembered that he wasn’t actually dead.
Stewart. Stewart was dead.
I tried to focus back on the actual service. The cantor was beginning to sing a song I recognized, lodged in the back of my mind from countless family services as a kid. I don’t know why, but as an adult any time I hear the Hebrew songs from my childhood, I get emotional. Maybe it’s because they take me back to such a specific time and place in my personal history: sitting in uncomfortable mauve-upholstered chairs, counting the stars of David on the stained glass, waiting for songs to liven things up. I was young; my parents were young. So, there’s nothing like a rousing rendition of “Bim Bom” to bring tears to my eyes.
As the cantor’s voice gathered steam, filling the room and our chests, my eyes welled. But I wasn’t on the verge of crying for Stewart. Not really. I was triggered by the passage of time—how brutal that reality can be.
It went on like that. I must have planned funerals for every mourner within a five-chair radius. I kept waiting for a eulogy, during which we all got to laugh and cry over stories that were “just so Stewart,” but none came. I guess Helen hadn’t wanted that. If she had, I might have been one of the people invited to speak. And it occurred to me that the Jewish tradition of burying people within three days of their deaths doesn’t leave a lot of prep time. I guess it’s designed to help people move on as quickly as possible.
As I watched Keith emote from a couple of rows away, I decided that, on second thought, speeches from friends would have been a terrible idea. His expression was just a hair too pained. Maybe that wasn’t fair. Maybe he really was devastated. The dark circles under his eyes were certainly cavernous. His neck looked extra bloated. But his repose—head cocked to one side, eyes squinting—was hard to buy.
I let my gaze sweep over the crowd. Stewart and his gaggle of followers. A little too much makeup. A little too much attention paid to hairstyles and blowouts. A little too much money spent on simple black dresses from Net-a-Porter—the Savile Row suits, the stacked rings. Some punctuated sobs for effect; a tissue requested at an unnatural volume. This was a funeral, yes, but it was also a social event. Even Gretchen had called me the night before for an outfit conferral.
; “How formal do you think it will be?”
“It’s a funeral, G. The dead don’t care.”
“Yes, but how formal a funeral? I’m-headed-back-to-work formal? I’ve-taken-the-day-off-for-this formal? I’ll-wear-heels-all-day-in-solidarity-with-your-pain formal?”
“I-don’t-care-what-you-wear formal.”
“But—”
“Gretchen.”
“Okay, fine. In honor of Stu and his propensity for overpriced clothing that looked sloppy as hell, I’ll keep it subtle.” She couldn’t resist the dig.
I zoned out for the rest of the service, fixing my eyes on a stained glass window above the stage that depicted some kind of boat journey. I felt strange and numb and all I could think about was whether Stewart’s uncle would want sushi or a Greek buffet at his funeral. Did they even allow spanakopita or raw fish at Jewish receptions, assuming it wasn’t shellfish? Was yellowtail sashimi with jalapeños and ponzu sauce too awkward to share? That, and I kept saving up all the details I wanted to share with Stewart: the overdetermined outfits; the drama school friends who sat too close to his well-known agent; one random girl who I didn’t recognize, doing such a dramatic performance of grief, that she drew curious glances even from the immediate family.
Eventually, it was over and people began to file out. And I thought, Really? That’s it? That’s the celebration of Stewart’s life? Since Stewart’s death, a few morning talk and E! news shows had done segments on him, though I hadn’t watched. I wasn’t ready. But those seemed to be over too. Now what? Just life without my friend? A telethon about aneurysm prevention?
How did you prevent aneurysms anyway? How did I know that I didn’t have one now, just waiting to implode? My dull headache grew more intense. I needed to get out. I mumbled something to Gretchen about heading outside, which she may or may not have heard, and then pushed my way through the crowd to the door, eyes downcast to avoid meeting someone I knew. I had almost made it out the main doors and onto the street when I felt a hand settle on my upper arm.
Competitive Grieving Page 3