Peter Hellman, my trombonist friend from conservatory camp, he died two years ago, but I didn’t find out until I returned to camp and he wasn’t there. Few of us had known that he’d had lymphoma. That was the funny thing about conservatory camp; you got so close with the people over the summer, but it was some unwritten rule that you didn’t keep in touch during the rest of the year. We were summer friends. Anyhow, we had a memorial concert at camp in Peter’s honor, but it wasn’t really a funeral.

Kerry Gifford was a musician in town, one of Mom and Dad’s people. Unlike Dad and Henry, who as they got older and had families became less music performers than music connoisseurs, Kerry stayed single and stayed faithful to his first love: playing music. He was in three bands and he earned his living doing the sound at a local club, an ideal setup because at least one of his bands seemed to play there every week, so he just had to hop up on the stage and let someone take the controls for his set, though sometimes you’d see him jumping down in the middle of a set to adjust the monitors himself. I had known Kerry when I was little and would go to shows with Mom and Dad and then I sort of remet him when Adam and I got together and I started going to shows again.

He was at work one night, doing the sound for a Portland band called Clod, when he just keeled over on the soundboard. He was dead by the time the ambulance got there. A freak brain aneurysm.

Kerry’s death caused an uproar in our town. He was kind of fixture around here, an outspoken guy with a big personality and this mass of wild white-boy dreadlocks. And he was young, only thirty-two. Everyone we knew was planning on going to his funeral, which was being held in the town where he grew up, in the mountains a couple of hours’ drive away. Mom and Dad were going, of course, and so was Adam. So even though I felt a little bit like an impostor crashing someone’s death day, I decided to go along. Teddy stayed with Gran and Gramps.

We caravanned to Kerry’s hometown with a bunch of people, squeezing into a car with Henry and Willow, who was so pregnant the seat belt wouldn’t fit over her bump. Everyone took turns telling funny stories about Kerry. Kerry the avowed left-winger who decided to protest the Iraq war by getting a bunch of guys to dress up in drag and go down to the local army recruiting office to enlist. Kerry the atheist curmudgeon, who hated how commercialized Christmas had become and so threw an annual Merry Anti-Christmas Celebration at the club, where he held a contest for which band could play the most distorted versions of Christmas carols. Then he invited everyone to throw all their crappy presents into a big pile in the middle of the club. And contrary to local lore, Kerry did not burn the stuff in a bonfire; Dad told me that he donated it to St. Vincent de Paul.

As everyone talked about Kerry, the mood in the car was fizzy and fun, like we were going to the circus, not a funeral. But it seemed right, it seemed true to Kerry, who was always overflowing with frenetic energy.

The funeral, though, was the opposite. It was horribly depressing — and not just because it was for someone who’d died tragically young and for no particular reason aside from some bad arterial luck. It was held in a huge church, which seemed strange considering Kerry was an outspoken atheist, but that part I could understand. I mean where else do you have a funeral? The problem was the service itself. It was obvious that the pastor had never even met Kerry because when he talked about him, it was generic, about what a kind heart Kerry had and how even though it was sad that he was gone, he was getting his “heavenly reward.”

And instead of having eulogies from his bandmates or the people in town who he’d spent the last fifteen years with, some uncle from Boise got up and talked about teaching Kerry how to ride a bike when he was six, like learning to ride a bike was the defining moment in Kerry’s life. He concluded by reassuring us that Kerry was walking with Jesus now. I could see my mom getting red when he said that, and I started to get a little worried that she might say something. We went to church sometimes, so it’s not like Mom had anything against religion, but Kerry totally did and Mom was ferociously protective of the people she loved, so much that she took insults upon them personally. Her friends sometimes called her Mama Bear for this reason. Steam was practically blowing out of Mom’s ears by the time the service ended with a rousing rendition of Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings.”

“It’s a good thing Kerry’s dead, because that funeral would’ve sent him over the edge,” Henry said. After the church service, we’d decided to skip the formal luncheon and had gone to a diner.

“‘Wind Beneath My Wings’?” Adam asked, absentmindedly taking my hand into his and blowing on it, which is what he did to warm my perpetually cold fingers. “What’s wrong with ‘Amazing Grace’? It’s still traditional—”


“But doesn’t make you want to puke,” Henry interjected. “Or better yet, ‘Three Little Birds’ by Bob Marley. That would have been a more Kerry-worthy song. Something to toast the guy he was.”

“That funeral wasn’t about celebrating Kerry’s life,” Mom growled, yanking at her scarf. “It was about repudiating it. It was like they killed him all over again.”

Dad put a calming hand over Mom’s clenched fist. “Now come on. It was just a song.”

“It wasn’t just a song,” Mom said, snatching her hand away. “It was what it represented. That whole charade back there. You of all people should understand.”

Dad shrugged and smiled sadly. “Maybe I should. But I can’t be angry with his family. I imagine this funeral was their way of reclaiming their son.”

“Please,” Mom said, shaking her head. “If they wanted to claim their son, why didn’t they respect the life he chose to live? How come they never came to visit? Or supported his music?”

“We don’t know what they thought about all that,” Dad replied. “Let’s not judge too harshly. It has to be heart-breaking to bury your child.”

“I can’t believe you’re making excuses for them,” Mom exclaimed.

“I’m not. I just think you might be reading too much into a musical selection.”

“And I think you’re confusing being empathetic with being a pushover!”

Dad’s wince was barely visible, but it was enough to make Adam squeeze my hand and Henry and Willow exchange a look. Henry jumped in, to Dad’s rescue, I think. “It’s different for you, with your parents,” he told Dad. “I mean they’re old-fashioned but they always were into what you did, and even in your wildest days, you were always a good son, a good father. Always home for Sunday dinner.”

Mom guffawed, as if Henry’s statement had proven her point. We all turned to her, and our shocked expressions seemed to snap her out of her rant. “Clearly I’m just emotional right now,” she said. Dad seemed to understand that was as much an apology as he was going to get right now. He covered her hand with his and this time she didn’t snatch it away.

Dad paused, hesitating before speaking. “I just think that funerals are a lot like death itself. You can have your wishes, your plans, but at the end of the day, it’s out of your control.”

“No way,” Henry said. “Not if you make your wishes known to the right people.” He turned to Willow and spoke to the bump in her belly. “So listen up, family. At my funeral no one is allowed to wear black. And for music, I want something poppy and old-school, like Mr. T Experience.” He looked up at Willow. “Got that?”

“Mr. T Experience. I’ll make sure of it.”

“Thanks, and what about you, honey?” he asked her.

Without missing a beat, Willow said: “Play ‘P.S. You Rock My World’ by the Eels. And I want one of those green funerals where they bury you in the ground under a tree. So the funeral itself would be in nature. And no flowers. I mean, give me all the peonies you want when I’m alive, but once I’m dead, better to give donations on my behalf to a good charity like Doctors Without Borders.”

“You’ve got all the details figured out,” Adam said. “Is that a nurse thing?”

Willow shrugged.

“According to Kim, that means you’re deep,” I said. “She says that the world is divided into the people who imagine their own funerals and the people who don’t, and that smart and artistic people naturally fall into the former category.”

“So which are you?” Adam asked me.

“I’d want Mozart’s Requiem,” I said. I turned to Mom and Dad. “Don’t worry, I’m not suicidal or anything.”

“Please,” Mom said, her mood lightening as she stirred her coffee. “When I was growing up I’d have elaborate fantasies about my funeral. My deadbeat father and all the friends who’d wronged me would weep over my casket, which would be red, naturally, and they’d play James Taylor.”

“Let me guess,” Willow said. “‘Fire and Rain’?”

Mom nodded and she and Willow started laughing and soon everyone at the table was cracking up so hard that tears ran down our faces. And then we were crying, even me, who didn’t know Kerry all that well. Crying and laughing, laughing and crying.

“So what now?” Adam asked Mom when we’d calmed down. “Still harbor a soft spot for Mr. Taylor?”

Mom stopped and blinked hard, which is what she does when she’s thinking about something. Then she reached over to stroke Dad’s cheek, a rare demonstration of PDA. “In my ideal scenario, my bighearted pushover husband and I die quickly and simultaneously when we’re ninety-two years old. I’m not sure how. Maybe we’re on a safari in Africa—’cause in the future, we’re rich; hey, it’s my fantasy — and we come down with some exotic sickness and go to sleep one night feeling fine and then never wake up. And no James Taylor. Mia plays at our funeral. If, that is, we can tear her away from the New York Philharmonic.”