Good Mourning (23 page)

Elaine was ecstatic to hear the news. “Oh thank God,” she said on the phone from her condo in Palm Beach. I pictured her out on her balcony, wearing high-waist pants and a top with her ridiculous owl brooch pinned to it. “And
London
. I
love
London. You must
mustmustmust
go to Alain Ducasse—oh, the food is just marvelous. I would come out there to visit but you know, I have the Smirnoffs, and it just gets so dreary there in certain seasons . . .” I wasn't quite sure why I had called her in the first place; it just felt like I was making a big change in my life, and she should know. As a result, I had to listen to forty-five minutes of gossip about every old biddy in her bridge group.

Envisioning what my life would be like in London wasn't just exciting, it was easy: I already had wonderful friends there. I would hop the pond, rent a flat, and busy myself with business school classes. Ever since my dad had gotten sick, I had clung on to New York; it was the place where I felt most connected to him, and it was also my home, the place I felt most secure. But the more I thought about it, I realized that just about the last thing my adventurous father would have wanted was for me to take the safe
route and stay put. If he were there, he would have said, “Why are you even thinking about it? Go!” And now with my family and friends behind me, there was only one thing left to do: quit Crawford.

I woke up feeling sick. Not, like, flu sick, or I-drank-three-too-many-vodkas sick, but just a nervous, terrible pit in my stomach. I didn't agree with everything Tony did in business, but he had been a mentor to me . . . and I was about to let him down. I rehearsed what I would say in the shower and while I blow-dried my hair. Then I opened my closet and laughed. Maybe it was because we sometimes don't see ourselves changing until the transformation has taken place, but it struck me just how far I'd come since my first day at Crawford; all of the furs and designer gowns were smushed together on the side, barely even reachable. Even my boxes of Jimmy Choos and Manolos were pushed away to make room for a line of ugly black Aerosoles flats. This had become my normal, and even though Crawford had been tough, it had also been worth it. I'd become a person I never even knew I had in me: strong, good under pressure, even more compassionate.

I put on my blazer and made the five-minute walk to Crawford.
You've got this
, I told myself, still a bit nervous but knowing for sure that I was doing the right thing. But before I talked to Tony, I wanted to let Bill know that I was leaving. I found him in the prep room (of course), already turning a stroke victim into a rosy-cheeked beauty.

“Bill,” I sighed, leaning in the doorway. I knew that I would miss him the most—especially the moments of the two of us dancing around the prep tables, gossiping and strategizing the Giants' trade options.

“Lizzie, why so glum?” he said, bobbing his head to the music.

“I'm not glum,” I said.

He looked up from the body. “You look pretty glum. More drama upstairs? Tell Monica that she can take an empanada and shove it up her—”

“No, no, no,” I laughed. “Bill, I'm about to quit.”

He rested the tube pumping the embalming fluid on the table and put his hands on his hips.

“Well, I'll be damned,” he said. “You finally did it. I'm proud of you, kid.”

“Proud of me? But I'm quitting,” I said. I wanted to tell him how much his friendship had meant to me, but I couldn't bring myself to get all sappy. Instead I just told him that I was going to go to London to “study some business.” “I'll miss seeing you all the time,” I finally said.

Bill smiled and held his arms out to give me a hug. “Well, we'll always have Paris.”

I laughed. “I'm not going to Paris, I'm going to
London
,” I said. “And you better not come near me with those gloves covered in God knows what.”

We both laughed. It was a drama-free good-bye, just like it had been a drama-free friendship. I don't know that I
would have made it through my time at Crawford without Bill keeping me sane.

I walked out of the prep room and down the hall, taking everything in. The air still smelled like lilies and carpet cleaner, just like it had when I'd walked in to plan Dad's funeral, but
I
was different now. Asking for a job at Crawford had been something I'd done on a whim when I was desperate to find myself. But I was no longer searching. Whether I liked it or not, it was within Crawford's walls that I'd figured out how to move on with a life that no longer included my dad. In the years after his death, this was the place where I became myself again . . . just a better, weirder ­version.

The sentimental feeling was replaced by an overall queasiness as I approached Tony's office. We hadn't been speaking much—the guy had been flat-out avoiding me—and suddenly there I was, about to tell him that I was leaving. I'd never had to quit a job before; I didn't know what to say, just what I
thought
I should say.

“I have to talk to you,” I said, taking a deep breath.
It's a job. People quit jobs. It's not personal
, I thought, giving myself a mental pep talk.

“This isn't really a great time. We've got a service this afternoon I've got to get ready for,” said Tony.

I stopped straight in front of his desk. I had prepared it all so perfectly, word for word. I would be calm and straightforward and professional. I would be unemotional but kind
and grateful. Instead, I opened my mouth, and all that came out was, “How do I give my two weeks' notice?”

Tony looked at me in silence for a good ten seconds. “I think you just did,” he said.

I braced myself for what I was sure would come next—an onslaught of “how could you's” and “after all we've done for you's”—but instead Tony just stood up, looked me in the eyes, and held out his hand. “I've never worked with someone like you,” he said. “We're going to miss you around here.”

Rather than shake his hand, I held my arms out for a hug. Soon, we were both laughing. “I think we both know
everyone
here is not going to miss me.”

“So what's next?” he asked, sitting back down.

“I'm thinking business school,” I said. “Shake things up a little.”

Tony smiled. “That is what you do best.”

MY PLANE
for London was leaving in three hours, and Mom was still running around the apartment, double-­checking that I had outlet converters and enough La Mer body lotion to butter up an elephant (as if they don't have dry skin in England). I had already shipped boxes of my clothes—there was no way I could fit them all in a couple of suitcases—so all I had was one large bag, and then a tote for a carry-on. I packed the latter with my engraved Moleskine notebooks, my wallet, and my favorite photo. It was a picture
of my mom, my dad, Max, Maggie, and me at the country house. We were sitting on the porch with the wind whipping our hair around, tan and smiling and
happy
. The photo reminded me that you never know when a good thing in your life is going to end; all you can do is enjoy the moment and appreciate what you have right there, right then.

“Are you sure you're going to be okay?” I asked Mom, who was now folding the cashmere shawl she always wore around the house.

“Elizabeth, I miss your father every day,” she said. “But he loved me enough for a lifetime. It was enough. It
is
enough. Don't worry about me.” She held out the loved garment and motioned for me to take it.

“But that's your favorite,” I said.

“It's freezing in London,” she said. “Do your ‘mum'
a favor and take the shawl so I don't have to worry about you huddled by some nineteenth-century heater.”

I unfolded the shawl and wrapped it around me.

“The mostest,” she said.

My eyes welled with tears. That had been what my father used to say when I dressed up for formal events. It started when I was eight years old. I'd walked down the hall wearing a blue dress with a wide sash and asked my father, “Do I look beautiful?” After that, every time we went somewhere fancy together, we played out the same routine. By the time I was in high school, I didn't even have to ask—he would just see me dressed up and say, “The mostest.”

The car was waiting for me outside. I kissed and petted Maggie one last time; checked again that I had my phone, wallet, and passport; and wrapped the shawl more tightly around me. “I love you so much, I'll call you when I land,” I said to my mom before handing my bag to the elevator man and riding it down to the lobby with him. “Here's to another adventure,” I said to my dad, looking up. It was hard to believe it'd only been a few months since I'd left Crawford. It hadn't left me. I received at least one call or e-mail a week about so-and-so's parent or grandparent who had passed away. People wanted my help, and I loved being the person they could rely on to make a memorable send-off possible. Maybe I really was a little weird and a little morbid. Whatever the case, I knew that the funeral business was where I was meant to be, and I couldn't wait to give it a major makeover. No more ugly floral arrangements or money-grubbing men in suits. No more boring, formulaic eulogies or weepy music that makes you want to throw back a few Xanax. Death could be a heartbreaking, overpriced sob fest . . . or it could be a ­celebration.

I, for one, was ready for a good party.

Postmortem

U
ntil someone close to you dies, it's impossible to know what that loss will feel like—and so the thought of death is terrifying, at least for most people. I can see now, four years since I left Crawford, that taking a job at a funeral home was my way of not clinging to but rather moving on from my dad's death. I needed to know death. I needed to understand it. I needed to stop fearing it, and my way of doing that was to help other people who were grieving.

You know how there are those relationships where the couple likes to stay in, watching movies and ordering takeout, just calm and steady? And then there are other couples who are either all over each other or in a heated argument? The latter is my relationship with Crawford. Now that we're broken up, so to speak, I have to remind myself of the bad
­moments—the Monica drama, the crazy hours, my alleged affair with Tony—because it's so easy to remember all of the good. Even now, when I enter a funeral home, I still have the urge to fix the flowers and critique the makeup job on the body (in all seriousness,
no one
is as good as Bill). I also never leave the house without a Kleenex in my purse, in case someone near me starts crying. It's a grief reflex I can't—and don't want to—turn off.

After Crawford, I did exactly what I set out to do: I spent a year in London, got my MBA, and started plotting how to plan funerals
my
way. And I got some practice earlier than I anticipated. Elaine called me in London, saying, “Lizzie, I'm dying. And considering everyone else in our world seems to think you're the best at dealing with this, one would at least assume you would handle your own grandmother's funeral.”

Elaine had a flair for the dramatic up until the very end, so I had to ask: “Dying right now? Or dying like we're all dying? You know I'm across the Atlantic, right?”

“Lovey girl, you know what I mean,” she said, her voice sounding even deeper and raspier than usual. The woman had smoked at least a pack of Benson & Hedges cigarettes (the ones that come in a gold box—of course) every day for the past sixty years. All those puffs had caught up with her.

I'd forgiven Elaine for bailing on Dad in his last moments as much as I could, but I'd never forgotten it. “Nanny, look. I'm meant to come home from London in two weeks,”
I said. “If it's an emergency, I will get on a plane now. If it's not, I will see you in two weeks.”

Elaine sighed loudly. “Fiiine. I'll wait.”

I flew straight from Heathrow to Palm Beach, where I found Elaine in a silk nightgown, her hair still perfectly done up, wearing coral-pink lipstick that matched her flawlessly manicured nails. She must have made the nurse double as a beautician, because there was no way she had done them herself. By this point, Elaine was mostly bedridden—­although you'd never know it from her attitude. She acted more like a woman of leisure napping away the afternoon than a sick person. To be fair, she was keeping with her style.

As I spent a few days in Palm Beach, Elaine's condition worsened. I called Max and told him to book a flight down. “If you want to say good-bye, I think you should come now,” I told him. Max had a similar relationship with Elaine as I did—he loved her, mostly out of obligation, but had never felt that warm, fuzzy feeling a grandma is supposed to give her grandkids. This was, after all, the woman who, when we'd visited as kids, would have “the help” set out a crudité platter and chopped liver, as if two children under the age of twelve wanted to munch on snap peas and oniony organs. Chocolate chip cookies? Not a chance. She probably thought Toll House was a private party venue.

Elaine was very clear on her preferences. She wanted to die in Palm Beach and then be shipped up to Crawford's sister funeral home in New York, which was more popular
with Jewish families. She specifically wanted a graveside service. Only me, Max, and close family should speak. “Did you write that down, lovey girl?” she said. “I don't want just anyone up there blabbing away, blah, blah, blah.”

As she deteriorated, I called hospice. They upped her morphine. It could have been that I'd gotten weirdly too comfortable with death, or maybe it was just that Elaine wasn't Grandmother of the Year, but her last days weren't a particularly emotional time. I made sure she wasn't in pain and that the nurses were doing their jobs. She made sure to occasionally open her eyes and say something, just to remind me she wasn't dead yet. When her breathing finally slowed, I prepared for a heartfelt good-bye. Instead, Elaine opened one eye, looked up at Max and me, and gave a half-smile. “Shalom!” she said. And then she was gone.

FOR THE
MOST PART
, my two lives—one in the funeral business, the other at society parties—rarely collide outside of Crawford. People just don't like to talk about death at social functions; it makes the champagne taste bad. But one recent exception to this rule was the night my friend was hosting an event at his newly opened restaurant. It was a big scene—the sort of event that draws celebrities, writers, artists, investors, CEOs . . . the works. And while my friend was one of the hosts, he didn't have a date. “I will look like a loser if I go to this alone,” he said. “And I can't bring some
rando.” Even though I'd grown to dread stuffy events (how many times do I need to stand in a circle with a bunch of women I barely know telling each other, “That juice cleanse is really working for you! And that dress! Mmm.
Superb
”), I wanted to support him, so I agreed to be his date.

I'd been seated next to an important guest my friend was trying to impress. (Nobody sits next to her date at these things anyway; it's considered antisocial.) She was a socialite, but also a writer for a prestigious magazine. And my friend, well, he wanted what any venue owner in this city wants—a glowing review from someone who matters.

I recognized her before I sat down, and my heart dropped. Would she remember me? The woman—I'll call her Victoria—gave me the once-over and then, sipping her glass of white wine, said, “So, do you work? Or do you just do
this
?” She stuck her pointer finger out from her grasp on the wineglass, looking disdainfully around the room. I felt proud that I wasn't just a girl who partied for a living, like some of my friends, and took a deep breath. “Actually, I work in the funeral business. You know, Crawford Funeral Home?” I said, watching her reaction closely.

Victoria looked at me again, this time taking in my face instead of my dress. Her eyes filled with tears and her lip quivered.

“I know,” I said, gently putting my hand on her back. “How are you and your daughter doing?”

A year and a half earlier, I had helped Victoria plan a
close family member's funeral. As soon as the connection was clear, her tears turned into a full cry, so I asked her if she'd like me to take her to the restroom. (There was always plenty of drama at society events, but one rule always applied: never be the woman crying at the table.) After she finally calmed down and blotted her eyes with the tissue I'd handed her from my purse, Victoria turned to me. “You need to explain yourself,” she said. “I would think a Crawford employee would need to sneak into a party like this.”

I told her my story—the short version, anyway—standing against the sinks in the ladies' room. A few weeks later, she wrote a piece about me for the magazine. Some people read it and dismissed me. I get it. It's easy to take a quick look and write me off as another mindless rich girl getting her hands dirty for attention, and that's exactly what some readers did. They made fun of my Gucci shoes and called me silly and shallow. The negativity took some getting used to, but at the end of the day, life's too short. It's too short to get upset about what other people think . . . too short not to do what makes you happy . . . too short to not call that person back, to stay angry, to hold a grudge. And—I can say this now that my mom is one of my best friends—it's
definitely
too short to resent the only parent you have.

But the best part about my unexpected career in the death business is that my dad would have loved it! He always encouraged me to embrace my quirkiness—one of his favorite sayings was “When the world zigs, zag.” If I could
still pick up the phone and call him (the way I want to every single day; I can still recite his number by heart), I know he would say he's proud of me.

Now I advise private clients and consult tech companies in the end-of-life industry. My biggest goal? To make death less scary by changing the business itself. I always say the topic of death is like that of sex was in the 1950s; nobody talked about it, but everyone was doing it.

I've spoken at universities, written columns, even chatted about funerals on the radio. My absolute favorite part of what I do is acting as a liaison between grieving families and funeral directors; I feel like I'm one of the few people who can truly understand both sides, and I like to think I help make a heavy process a little less weighty. This might be a weird job, but screw it . . . I'm a weirdo. I'd much rather be a contrarian than the person I could have become—another girl, with another cocktail, acting like lunching on the Upper East Side is a career. Instead, I've found my strange, wonderful calling. And even though death might not be the way
most
people make a living, I would just about die doing anything else.