The Art of Mending by Elizabeth Berg

Pete and the kids, arranged in an intimate little semicircle, waiting for the fireworks, I supposed. I greeted them, dropped my purse, and sat on the grass before them. I pulled my knees up to my chest, rested my forehead on top of them, and drew in a long breath. I could finally relax. I looked up, smiling.
    “Where have you
been
?” Anthony asked.
    “Why? Did you miss me?” I rose up to kiss the top of his head multiple times, just to annoy him. His head smelled good, a yeasty smell. “Awww, did you miss me?”
    He frowned, looked away.
    “Laura,” Pete said.
    I turned toward him. “Yeah?” Then, my smile disappearing, I said, “What?” And then, as he got out of his chair and started toward me, his face full of sadness, “Oh, my God.”

12
    WHEN PETE AND I HAD FINALLY GOTTEN AROUND TO making our wills, we’d talked about what we wanted done at our funerals. He’d wanted a straight service, something dignified; I wanted something looser. I’d wanted things read by friends and relatives that would entertain and inspire: essays by Annie Dillard, poetry by Mary Oliver. I’d wanted one quilt over me, another one draped over the coffin, and the one called “Water at Night,” my pride and joy, the silver and black quilt that won first prize in a national competition—I’d wanted that quilt to be given away by a raffle drawing. When everyone filed out of the church, I’d wanted James Brown to be singing “I Feel Good.”
    “You don’t want James
Brown,
” Pete had said, and I’d said, “Yes I do. I want people to think that’s how it is, over yonder. That you feel good.”
    “Okay,” he’d said, in that singsong way that meant
I think you’re nuts.
    Of course when you plan your funeral, you do it thinking you won’t really die. It’s just a good exercise. You plan it in case you die.
    You know your parents are going to die, but they are going to die later. They are going to die
sometime.
But that time will not come until you no longer need them. While you still need them, or might need them, they will have the good taste and common courtesy not to leave. This was how I’d always thought of it, I see now.
    At my father’s funeral I sat frozen, holding Pete’s hand tightly and feeling absolutely nothing. The priest was standing at the pulpit, sharing amusing anecdotes about my father so we could all remember we were here
not to mourn a death but to celebrate a life.
Amid the sounds of sniffing and discreet nose-blowing came appreciative chuckles—appreciative or obligatory, I wasn’t sure which.
    Steve sat in the row ahead of us, Tessa leaning into him. On his other side sat my mother, dabbing at her eyes. At the end of our row, Caroline sat next to Bill but at a slight declarative distance from him. I looked around the church, at the dull sheen of old gold, the stained-glass windows. I thought about a quilt I’d once made out of jewel-colored douppioni silks, designed to look like stained glass. I remembered a time I’d sat beside my father when we went to midnight mass. The decorations were so beautiful, the music so rich, I’d begun to quietly weep in awe and appreciation, and my father, staring straight ahead, had reached over to take my hand:
I know.
And now the dam broke and I understood that it was true; my father had died and I was sitting here at his funeral and he would never take my hand again.
    I remembered him reading to me when I had the mumps, the same battered Little Golden Book, over and over again. I remembered him bandaging my knee on a day I fell off my bike, hugging me before I left for college, walking me down the aisle on my wedding day, how his eyes filled with tears when he told Pete in as stern a voice as he could muster, “You take good care of her, now.” I thought of riding high on his shoulders when I was three, him trying to teach me how to whistle, and how, when I learned, he’d given me a new dollar bill. I remembered the night someone stole my Halloween