Good Mourning (2 page)

I didn't sleep. I'm not sure anybody did. For one thing, our apartment was buzzing with people well past midnight—I couldn't tell if they were grieving and wanted to connect to Dad, through us, or
if they felt bad and didn't want to leave Mom, Max, and me alone. Normally, I would
be the one walking around filling people's drinks and turning up the music, but I couldn't will myself off that couch. I had even hoisted poor Maggie onto it with me, using her ­as a pillow. It wasn't until Gaby—fresh off a plane from Los Angeles—rushed through the door and threw her arms around me that I finally felt a sense of calm. While most people wouldn't put their thousand-dollar vicuña shawl anywhere near someone's teary, snot-covered face, she pulled me in as close to her as I could get. Gaby was the one person who didn't ask me if I was okay. She knew I wasn't. She wasn't really, either. We both loved my dad.

At seven a.m., I took Maggie out to Central Park, her absolute favorite time to go for a walk since dogs are ­allowed to roam off-leash early in the morning. Afterward, I took off my clothes—the same ones I had been wearing for more than twenty-four hours—and dragged myself into the shower. I let the hot water run over me and again fell into a deep cry, this time with no one to comfort me. Dad was gone. He wasn't on a business trip. He wasn't at the hospital. Yesterday, with its quiet beginning and hectic ending, was not a dream. A heavy weight built up in my chest until I let out a deep sob—the kind of cry that starts way down inside of you and comes out like a gasp of air. My tears mixed with the water pouring down from the showerhead, and for twenty minutes, I sat on the floor, too exhausted to hold myself up. After I physically couldn't cry anymore, I took a deep breath, toweled myself off, and
looked in the mirror. “Okay, Lizzie, get it tog­ether,” I said to myself, channeling as much of my father's strength as I could.

“ELIZABETH, WELCOME.
We're so sorry for your loss,” said a woman in a black suit standing in the Crawford foyer. I felt like I had walked right into a mausoleum—the outside of the building was smooth brown stone, and the inside, at least upon entering, wasn't much more inviting. “Tony, our funeral director, will be with you in a moment.”

She left me standing on the ornate green rug, staring up at the absolutely huge chandelier that hung from the twenty-­foot ceiling like a spider from a web. I was immediately overwhelmed with the smell of lilies. If you've ever been to a wake, you know why: florists love to put lilies in floral arrangements for funerals. It's like the unofficial death flower. I decided then that I would not let lilies invade Dad's ­service.

My first impression of Tony was that he looked like Tony Soprano—just with gelled-back, prematurely gray hair. He was smartly dressed in a black suit and red tie, although the poor stitching and slightly shiny fabric were a dead giveaway that he was
not
in designer duds. But, he had the right smile for the occasion: friendly, but not happy. I mean, any time someone walked through Crawford's door, it was because they were experiencing one of the worst moments in their
lives. He couldn't exactly greet them with a wide grin and a kiss on both cheeks.

Tony led me to his office, which looked like it hadn't been updated in decades. All the furniture was a dark wood, and the drapes, the rugs, the oil paintings—they all just looked so . . .
heavy
. It was kind of how I felt; even though I'd lost ten pounds in the past month, I was weighed down with grief. “We've got floral arrangements you can choose from, and I'll take you to the casket room,” he said, pushing a book with photos of—you guessed it—lilies across the desk. I shuddered a little looking at a giant baseball made of white carnations and red roses and pushed the book back across the table.

“No,” I said. “But thank you.”

“No? I mean, we have other options, we can do whatever you—”

“I have my own plans for Dad's funeral, and what I want is for this not to feel like a funeral at all. For starters, I don't want any flowers like this. I want peonies.” (Peonies are my mom's favorite flower, and while I knew Dad wouldn't care about the blooms, I was sure he'd be happy for her to have that little piece of comfort.)

“Peonies are out of season,” said Tony, shaking his head. “Most people couldn't get them for you, but I can. They'll have to be flown in from Brazil. It will be expensive, but it will be great.”

“That's fine,” I said. “Just get white peonies.”

Tony sat up straighter in his chair.

Our next stop was the casket room. Dad was going to be cremated, but thanks to my pricey floral selection, Tony was onto my affinity for luxury. Rather than just suggest a standard poplar-wood casket, Tony led me toward a white casket lined in powder-blue velvet, a mahogany casket with pops of gold on the handles, and the pièce de résistance, a casket made entirely from bronze. “This is a beauty,” he said, running his hands along the edges. “Of course, it's metal, so it can't be used for a cremation.”

“How much?” I asked.

“This one is ninety thousand.”

“
Dollars?”

Even in my grief, or maybe
especially
because I was grieving, I was annoyed that Tony would even show me such a ridiculously priced casket. What kind of insane person would spend that much money on a box, especially for someone who wasn't even going to be buried in it?

I spent hours walking Tony through my vision for Dad's funeral. There would be no boring hymns. No tragic eulogies. If there was one thing I knew for certain, it was that Dad would want us to celebrate his life with a party, not some sob fest. And if there was anyone who could give him that, it was me. I'd spent years planning events for friends. Granted, they were usually to celebrate a grand opening or a significant birthday, but this wouldn't be that different. Trade out a hip-hop DJ for a jazz ensemble, centerpieces for
a casket spray, and invitations for prayer cards, and boom, the perfect send-off.

The night before the service, I called Gaby and asked her to pick out a black dress for me. She came over with two Fendi sheath dresses—one for me, and one for her. “It's the same dress,” I said, stating the obvious. It was so Gaby to do something like that. Everyone always assumed when they met her that, since she was the daughter of a famous rock star, she would be some ditzy, spoiled brat, but that couldn't be further from the truth. She had a huge heart—and great taste. I gave her a hug, thankful for her sign of solidarity.

I wanted to get to Crawford right when it opened at eight a.m. to make sure that Tony had set everything up exactly as I had asked, so I jumped out of bed even before my alarm went off at seven and slipped into the Fendi dress and a pair of Jimmy Choos. I looked out the window onto the mostly empty sidewalks, the rest of the Upper East Side still sipping their lattes or under their pressed Egyptian-cotton sheets. For them, this would be just another day. I turned from the window and clasped on my dad's Rolex. He hadn't officially left it to me, but there was an unspoken understanding that I would be the one to wear it. There had always been alliances in our house: Mom and Max were a team, feeding off of each other's practicality and general anxiety, and then there was me and Dad, always up to something fabulous and fun. While I love my mother—she's one of the strongest people I've ever met—Dad was my person. I
always knew he had my back. Even my mom seemed to recognize that Dad's death would affect me in a different way than my brother. She certainly wasn't going to say anything when I grabbed his watch. Nobody was.

“Are you ready?” Mom asked from the hallway. Turns out, she and Max hadn't gotten much sleep either. Since we were all ready to go, we decided to walk over to Crawford together.

Tony was the first person to greet us. He paid special attention to my mother, carefully directing her into the room where my father's casket was displayed, along with framed photos of him from different points of his life. There it was: Dad on a sailboat, Dad with his best friend, Dad piling sand onto the yard at our country house to create a “beach.” A whole life laid out in still images, which I had delivered in a box the day before. Mom saw the white peonies and put her hands over her mouth. “Oh,” she said, holding her hand to her chest, her eyes filling with tears.

“Where's the restroom?” I asked, needing a minute to myself. Tony directed me down the hall. Just as I turned the corner toward the ladies' room, I bumped into another man in a black suit holding a large makeup bag.

“You have more makeup than I do,” I said, smiling.

The man smiled back softly. “Sorry,” he said. “Didn't mean to get in your way.”

“It's fine,” I said. “I'm Liz, Brett's daughter.”

“So sorry for your loss, Elizabeth,” said the man. He had
an accent similar to Tony's, but more wrinkles than him and warm blue eyes. “I'm Bill.”

I thought I had heard Tony mention his name. “Are you the embalmer?” I asked.

Bill looked uncomfortable, shifting from one foot to the other. “That would be me,” he said. “Again, so sorry about your dad.”

What else can you say to someone who just lost their ­favorite person?

When I got back to the chapel, I noticed that all of the additional chairs the staff had brought in for overflow guests were going to create a traffic jam near the casket. “They all need to go to the back of the room,” I said out loud, looking around to see if I could find Tony. I'd planned enough events to know that if things got really crowded, as I suspected they might, we'd need the space for standing room.

Mom shook her head. “There's no need. This service is just for family and very close friends. There will only be a small group of us,” she said.

An hour later, more than five hundred people were lined up out the door of the funeral home. There were, of course, old friends and neighbors, family members and colleagues from the law firm. There were also Dad's clients—rap stars and fashion moguls, famous entertainers and their entourages. (Only in Manhattan can a funeral double as a place to see and be seen.)

I wasn't surprised by the diverse crowd. That was the thing about Dad—he made everyone feel like a close friend.

I busied myself greeting people as they entered the room. Instead of boring hymns, David Bowie and the Rolling Stones buzzed from the speakers. I hugged everyone at the door, trying to signal that this was an upbeat affair—it was okay to laugh and share stories. Once traffic was moving steadily to the front of the room, I ran over to find Max, who was nervously holding a copy of the eulogy we had written together. “You about ready?” I said. Don't get me wrong—I was nervous too. But Max and I had spent hours deciding which details of Dad's life to share with a room full of people who loved him. I had a feeling we'd bring the house down. And if not, well, what kind of terrible person is going to criticize a eulogy?

“Thank you all for coming today,” I said, looking at the rows and rows of faces. So many people were crowded into the room that even those lined up against the wall were standing four rows deep. I saw my mom clutch the tissues in her hand and take a deep breath. Max and I then proceeded to tell our favorite stories about Dad. It had been hard to narrow them down, but I took special joy in telling everyone about the time Dad was asked to bring the “gifts” up to the altar at Christmas mass. Dad was Jewish—he only went to midnight mass with my mom every year because it meant a lot to her. After more than two decades of marriage, Mom decided to kick things up a notch and volunteered herself
and my dad to walk the wine and Eucharist down the aisle to the priest. Dad was excited to have a special part in the ceremony—he'd been passively participating for years, sitting, then standing; standing, then kneeling; up and down, up and down. He couldn't wait to bring the gifts to the altar, because who doesn't love presents? On the night of the mass, just seconds before they walked down the aisle, Dad looked puzzled as they handed him a metal bowl with a cloth over it. “Ohhh,” he said, slightly disappointed. “
These
gifts.” He recovered from the disappointment that his role was not to play Santa Claus, and after he deposited the bowl of wafers with the priest, he gave a thumbs-up on his way back to the pew while the other churchgoers looked on. Many of them knew my dad and that he was Jewish and playing along for his family.

Laughter echoed through the room as Max and I took turns, growing more confident in our eulogizing abilities with each crazy story. It gave me a thrill to see people crying from laughter—those were the tears Dad would have wanted. When Max and I finished our speech, a friend of mine from high school, Jen, threw her arms around me. Like plenty of people I grew up with, Jen's parents were almost entirely absent from her life. A nanny had raised her. A chauffeur had driven her to school and ballet class. Her father, a big-time financier, stopped by our high school graduation but left before she even walked the stage to get her diploma because he “had a meeting.” “It should have been
my dad,” she said. “It's not fair.” (Before you judge her for saying something so awful, let me vouch for Jen and say her dad really was a trash can.)