The Last Kiss

by Leslie Brody

  “My tombstone should read ‘He came to play,”’ my dad had said. And that he did.

  Who would ever have thought that someday I would have more experience as a widow than my mother? That she would turn to me for advice? That we would have this in common?

  A few weeks after my father died, my mother, my sister’s family and my kids went out on his beloved sailboat to bury him at sea. He would have liked the spot in front of the Shelter Island beach where my family had a house when I was little.

  It was a drizzly afternoon. None of us felt like making speeches. My mother didn’t want to do the tossing. She looked at my sister and me. I shook my head no. So Jessie took the bag of our father’s ashes and stood up. A year older than me, she had always taken on the boat’s harder jobs.

  “Ready?” she asked. I nodded yes, and she threw the closed bag of dust. It was hard to fathom it was really our father. It landed with a splash and faded down below the gray-green water. My mother let out a sob. None of us said a word. In a nautical tradition, Jessie tossed in his white canvas sailing hat too. I watched the hat float on the choppy waves as the boat turned away.

  Rain began to fall hard, and my heart felt like it was about to burst, so I went down the ladder into the cabin below. My kids followed me, and we sat close together on one of the cushioned benches. I had an arm around each one and kissed each one on the forehead. I breathed and simply felt them with me. Devon leaned her head against my shoulder. Alex started to cry.

  In a little while we were calm again. The rain stopped and we came out of the cabin. The cool, salty air felt good. To my surprise, my sister whispered to me that during our little ceremony, she had almost cracked a joke. She reminded me of the days when we were kids and used to zip around this bay on a sunfish practicing lifesaving drills with our father just for fun. One of us would slip into the water at an unexpected moment. The first to notice would call out “man overboard” and whoever was at the helm would race to the rescue. Jessie said that when she threw our father’s ashes, she was tempted to call out “man overboard” one last time. I couldn’t help laughing. He would have laughed too.

  It felt right to let go of my father that way. At his age, leaving was part of nature.

  I still can’t let go of my husband. And that feels right too. Elliot’s ashes are still in his dresser drawer.

  Next to the dresser, a set of wind chimes sat in their unopened package for more than a year. An exceedingly kind woman had given them to me. After she lost her seven-year-old daughter to cancer, someone had given her a set of chimes too, saying their music would let her hear Emily’s voice in the wind.

  I kept my chimes in their cardboard box because I was afraid their sound would kill me. I thought they would only taunt me with the absence of the husband I love so completely. But today, a glorious spring morning, I finally dared take the chimes out of their box and hung them in our yard in the sun. They sound beautiful in a gentle breeze. I found I like hearing Elliot in the air I breathe.

  I am willing to believe, or pretend, or decide, that he is with me now, and he will be always.

  LETTING GO

  October 2010

  Elliot used to say that big commercial movies finish with all the plot lines tied up in a neat bow, while independent films leave some loose ends dangling. So this story would be more of an indie, with good days and hard ones and questions still unanswered.

  It’s been almost two years since he died. I have dug in at work, where I now have a full-time job covering education, one of the hottest beats at the paper. At least for the moment, there seems to be an enormous appetite for news about contentious attempts to fire bad teachers, fix rotten test scores and turn around chronically failing schools. This stuff matters to me, and it gives me a kick that at press conferences, New Jersey’s colorful Governor Christie calls on me by name.

  My daughter, Devon, just got her driver’s license. My son, Alex, only a baby when Elliot and I got together, is fourteen, with blond fuzz where a moustache wants to be. It seems like any minute they’ll be heading off to college so I want to do things with them we’ll never forget. The three of us went on a gorgeous vacation in Costa Rica, where iguanas crawled by our toes at breakfast and monkeys played at the beach. We took surfing lessons and were shocked to find we could get up. It was impossible to keep my balance in the waves but simply trying made me feel young and light and free. It didn’t hurt to fall.

  We’ve had some proud milestones. Max graduated from college in May and headed to Los Angeles to find a job in screenwriting. Elliot would be thrilled to see his youngest, the shy and serious one, taking such a daring leap. Aaron married Sallie in a lovely wedding in Chicago. They say they want to name their first son after Elliot. How I would love to give a tiny gurgling Elliot a very first kiss.

  My personal milestone was a bit less dramatic. One day about a month ago I let Sadie off her leash in the woods so she could sniff around unencumbered. Usually when I did that she stayed close. Not this time. When a shaggy sheepdog lumbered by, she trotted after him and refused to come when I called her. I had to chase her down, blushing that I had so little clout.

  “You can’t blame her,” said the dog’s master. “My Cookie must be her Prince Charming.”

  I laughed as I bent down to grab Sadie’s collar. When I looked up I saw a handsome man with dark hair, an amused grin and relaxed way of walking. He seemed a few years younger than me.

  In the Julia Roberts version, we would stop to talk, hit it off and stroll off into the sunset with our smitten puppies in the lead. But the stranger kept going his way and I went mine.

  That’s when I took off my wedding ring. If I wanted such encounters to have a chance of leading somewhere someday, it didn’t make sense to advertise myself as off limits.

  Elliot would have to understand. As a wise counselor once told me, “Even when you lose the person you feel most connected to, you don’t lose your deeply human need to connect.”

  The thought that maybe it was time to put away my ring had struck me once a few months before. My friend Lynn had invited me for a summer weekend at her family’s country house in Connecticut, a gorgeous rustic cabin on a pond. We took a fifteen-mile bike ride with her parents, who were in their late seventies, still working and in fabulous shape. For thirty years I had admired their casual good looks and dedication to their careers in science and teaching. As we pedaled up the hills I marveled at their drive, especially when I noticed the scar on Lynn’s father’s back where he’d had major surgery the year before. Yet for all of their energy, and for all of Lynn’s mother’s beauty, their skin was more lined and their teeth seemed more fragile. Even this indefatigable couple was showing signs of wear. It dawned on me I would be lucky to be in such great shape at their age—and that was only about twenty-five years away. Not really much time at all. If I ever wanted to be part of a couple again, the window of possibility for meeting someone suddenly seemed small. Life is shorter than we think. Maybe I should wrench myself out of the past, sooner rather than later, or I’d be acting like one of those Indian women throwing herself on her husband’s funeral pyre.

  Surely Elliot wouldn’t want that.

  To my sentimental satisfaction, my finger is still indented where my ring used to be. Its shadow lingers as proof that he will always have his due influence.

  “I hope I find somebody who loves me the way Elliot loved you,” my daughter declared out of the blue as we were doing errands one day. “He couldn’t have been more devoted.”

  My heart swelled. We taught our children what real married love can mean. I can’t think of a better legacy.

  Devon said I deserved to be happy with a man again and told me her daydream: This book would be made into a movie, and George Clooney would play Elliot.

  “George will meet you on the set and fall in love,” she said. “Then you can marry Elliot, in George’s body, all over again.”

  On our last big family vacation with Elliot, he got a T-shirt from t
he lodge where we stayed in the Adirondacks. The shirt is maroon, and under the Hedges logo there’s a hand-drawn picture of two people in a canoe on a lake surrounded by pine trees. The moon shines overhead. It’s an image of utter tranquility.

  “That’s where I want to be right now,” Elliot used to say as he pointed to the peaceful scene on his chest.

  And so that’s where he is.

  Last weekend I took our kids back to the Hedges. It was perfect October weather. The leaves were glorious in the sun, all burnt orange and crimson and gold. I brought the brass box with Elliot’s ashes in his black L. L. Bean knapsack. In a private moment I couldn’t help unzipping the pockets. Yes, there were his computer screen wipes, umbrella and Trojans, as always. I smiled.

  After breakfast Sunday the six of us headed out in canoes and made our way across Blue Mountain Lake towards a tiny island, really just an outcropping of rocks with a few evergreens.

  “This is a beautiful spot,” was all I could say. As we drifted silently in our canoes I held the brass box at an angle over the side and let the grey ashes fall bit by bit into the clear water. They were darker than my dad’s, who knows why, and they swirled in a cloud under the ripples. In time the current pulled us away. We stayed quiet for a while, and then I wiped my eyes and took my paddle and began to head back to shore. The kids did the same. The wind picked up and blew against us. It became a challenge to move forward but we made it back to land eventually, one after another.

  “That was a good idea,” Kate said simply as we hoisted our canoes onto the dock. I think so. I like to imagine Elliot near the hiking he loved so much, someplace we all had fun together, with good food, wine, campfires, a porch with rocking chairs for reading and a magnificent view. There’s something eternal about looking at the mountains.

  It was hard to drive away. But sometimes you have to force yourself into the future.

  EPILOGUE

  2012

  Every morning when I wake up I lie in bed for a while, looking through my window at the sunrise over Manhattan. For years there was a gap where the World Trade Center used to be, but recently an elegant new tower went up to fill that space. It’s almost finished and taller than its neighbors.

  Of course this tower can never replace what was lost. It reminds me, though, that I am certainly not alone in trying to rebuild a life, and new possibilities can come in time, if we let them.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Here’s a huge thanks to the army of great women who helped me through the past several years and made this book happen. They have fed, taught, encouraged and inspired me with unstinting generosity.

  My good friend and writer Pamela Redmond Satran was the first to make me think I might be able to pull off something longer than a newspaper series. This project was a hazy glimmer of an idea until she took me out to lunch one day and said, “Let’s talk about your book.” Just hearing those words made it sound possible.

  Then Pam brought me to a party where I met the indefatigable Laurie Lico Albanese. Laurie, a novelist, mentioned she taught a college course on writing memoir, and she agreed on the spot to teach me too. And so for many months I spent Wednesday nights in Laurie’s attic with two other women learning how to spin small moments into personal narratives. Those hours of empathy, sidesplitting laughter and occasional tears sustained me through that first uncertain year as a widow. When the future looked so blank, Laurie’s warmth, humor and conviction that I could finish a manuscript gave me a sense of purpose. Even more, we became close friends.

  My loyal friends from high school and college took the baton. When I was dithering about whether and how to look for an agent, they urged me on. Profound thanks to Lisa Noveck Buseck, Susan Briggs, Claudia Meininger Gold, Linda Schupack, Alexandra Shelley and Nancy Youman. Maggie Jackson and Lynn Novick went way beyond the call—more on them later.

  My savvy, tenacious and wonderfully caring agent, Judith Ehrlich, willed this book into print. Her faith in this project and dedication to details were deeply moving. Sophia Seidner, her colleague at Judith Ehrlich Literary Management, added her keen intuition and skills. Thanks also to my publisher, Tracy Ertl, who was excited by the manuscript from her first reading and welcomed me into the TitleTown fold.

  At The Record, my compassionate editors Susan DeSantis and Deirdre Sykes gave me the flexibility my family needed. My fellow reporters Patricia Alex, Mary Jo Layton and Lindy Washburn made coming to work fun, thanks to their talent, irreverence and hilarious lunchtime updates.

  My book group has been a rock for more than a decade. Somehow I brought more than my share of drama to our monthly meetings. Here’s a toast to Jean-Marie Menk, Cindy Carlson, Marcia George, Sheri Karvelas, Nancy Kopilnick, Sue McKeown, Frazer O’Neill, Tracy Parsons and Nancy Tortoriello.

  I hope these women never find themselves in circumstances where they need my support the way that I needed theirs. But if they do, I hope I will be there for them the way they were always there for me.

  It’s time to add a few men to the mix. Several couples were stalwarts and figured out ways to help us before we even knew what we needed. My deepest appreciation to Lynn Novick and Robert Smith; Pam and Dick Satran; Maggie Jackson and John Hitchcock; Mary Ellen Schoonmaker and Mike Hoyt; and Celia Radek and Larry Engelstein.

  Elliot’s colleagues at Bloomberg News were incredibly sensitive to his needs, while his book group buddies cheered him on and distracted him with their ridiculous rescheduling rituals.

  Special thanks to the fantastic friends of Devon and Alex, especially the families of Diana Lawson and Jack Ross, who gave my kids another set of warm, loving and endlessly entertaining homes when they needed a refuge. We are so lucky to have you.

  Thanks as well—for an array of reasons—to Helen Pinsley, Anastasia Rubis, Sallie Scherer, Anthony Brinton, Janet Wicka, Milo Geyelin and our neighbors at the top of our hill.

  On the medical front, we were very fortunate to get help from the expert, extremely hard-working staff at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, especially Dr. David Kelsen and his nurse, Jenny Jenkins.

  My mother, Jackie Brody; sister, Jessica Nagy; and her family of Lee, Summer and Ernie have stuck by me with care and generosity, helped me raise my kids, and always made sure they wore sunscreen.

  There are not enough words to express my gratitude to my father, Gene Brody, whose confidence in me meant so much.

  Needless to say, I wish Elliot could be here and could read what amounts to a last love letter. I wish he could see how well our kids are doing and what they’ve become. I wish he could meet his first grandchild, a gorgeous baby girl named Juniper.

  I couldn’t be more proud of them.

  The biggest thanks of all go to Alex, Devon, Max, Kate and Aaron.

  I hope this book will help them remember.

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  In “The Last Kiss,” Leslie Brody shows how she and her husband, Elliot, made the most of their vanishing time together while he was fighting pancreatic cancer. The book shows the life-affirming power of a passionate marriage, the importance of loyal friends and the resilience of children. A newspaper reporter for more than twenty years, Leslie says this is the most important story she has ever told.

  1. If you learned you had two years left to live, how would you change your life right now? If you learned your husband or wife had two years left, how do you imagine your reaction might be different?

  2. At what point does Leslie seem most conflicted? How does she face the unanswerable elements of her situation?

  3. Leslie bristles at insensitive comments people make about Elliot’s illness. What rude things have people said to you in times of crisis? What would have been more helpful? How did you respond?

  4. Has a tragedy changed your religious views in some way? How?

  5. When Leslie tells her children that Elliot used medical marijuana before it was legal, she says that sometimes you have to break the rules to do the right thing. Have you ever broken a law, or under wh
at circumstances would you do so?

  6. After an embarrassing quarrel in the chemo unit with Elliot, Leslie says “maybe a marriage is like muscle that you have to strain and flex and stretch to strengthen.” How does this image apply to your own life?

  7. For better or worse, in sickness or health. Have you wondered how far you would go to uphold these vows? Would you follow the advice that Leslie embraced, “Don’t be afraid to grow closer?”

  8. What role does food play in the evolution of Leslie’s stepfamily? How do you see food—as either a source of togetherness or tension—in your family’s life?

  9. Leslie doesn’t shield her children from the sad physical realities of their stepfather’s deterioration. How do you see her decision?

  10. The book shares Elliot’s intimate emails and letters. Is that an invasion of his privacy? What are the pros and cons to you as a reader?

  11. Leslie and Elliot never really talk directly about death or how she would take care of their family after he dies. How do you feel about that choice?

  12. At the end of the book, Leslie feels deeply torn about when—or even whether—to start dating again. What would you do, and how long would you wait? How long would you want your partner to wait?

  13. What is the symbolism of the peach that Leslie sketches and then eats with Elliot? “We live for moments like this,” she says. What is a moment in your life that stands out this way?

  14. Besides the written and spoken word, how do Leslie and Elliot show their love for each other? Are some ways of expressing love more meaningful to you than other ways?