Maybe You Should Talk to Someon - Lori Gottlieb Page 0,172
steak!” she said, her voice weak and barely audible. “They better have steak wherever I’m going.” And then she fell asleep. It was an ending not unlike our sessions, where even though “our time is up,” the conversation lingers. In the best goodbyes, there’s always the feeling that there’s something more to say.
I’m astounded—though I shouldn’t be—by the turnout at Julie’s funeral party. There are hundreds of people here from all parts of her life: her childhood friends, her summer-camp friends, her marathon-training friends, her book-club friends, her college friends, her graduate-school friends, her work friends and colleagues (from both the university and Trader Joe’s), her parents, both sets of grandparents, Matt’s parents, both of their siblings. I know who they are because people from all of these groups get up and talk about Julie, telling stories of who she was and what she meant to them.
When it’s Matt’s turn, everyone goes silent, and sitting in the back row, I look down at my iced tea and the napkin in my hand. IT’S MY PARTY AND YOU’LL CRY IF YOU WANT TO! it says. Earlier I’d noticed a big banner that read I STILL CHOOSE NEITHER.
Matt takes some time to settle himself before he speaks. When he does, he shares an anecdote about how Julie had written a book for him to have after she was gone, and she titled it, The Shortest Longest Romance: An Epic Love and Loss Story. He loses it here, then slowly composes himself and keeps going.
He explains that in the book, he was surprised to find that near the end of the story—their story—Julie had included a chapter on how she hoped Matt would always have love in his life. She encouraged him to be honest and kind to what she called his “grief girlfriends”—the rebound girlfriends, the women he’ll date as he heals. Don’t mislead them, she wrote. Maybe you can get something from each other. She followed this with a charming and hilarious dating profile that Matt could use to find his grief girlfriends, and then she got more serious. She wrote the most achingly beautiful love letter in the form of another dating profile that Matt could use to find the person he’d end up with for good. She talked about his quirks, his devotion, their steamy sex life, the incredible family she inherited (and that, presumably, this new woman would inherit), and what an amazing father he’d be. She knew this, she wrote, because they got to be parents together—though in utero and for only a matter of months.
The people in the crowd are simultaneously crying and laughing by the time Matt finishes reading. Everyone should have at least one epic love story in their lives, Julie concluded. Ours was that for me. If we’re lucky, we might get two. I wish you another epic love story.
We all think it ends there, but then Matt says that he feels it’s only fair that Julie have love wherever she is too. So in that spirit, he says, he’s written her a dating profile for heaven.
There are a few chuckles, although they’re hesitant at first. Is this too morbid? But no, it’s exactly what Julie would have wanted, I think. It’s out-there and uncomfortable and funny and sad, and soon everyone is laugh-sobbing with abandon. She hates mushrooms, Matt has written to her heavenly beau, don’t serve her anything with mushrooms. And If there’s a Trader Joe’s, and she says that she wants to work there, be supportive. You’ll also get great discounts.
He goes on to talk about how Julie rebelled against death in many ways, but primarily by what Matt liked to call “doing kindnesses” for others, leaving the world a better place than she found it. He doesn’t enumerate them, but I know what they are—and the recipients of her kindnesses all speak about them anyway.
I’m glad I came, glad that I got to fulfill my promise to Julie and also see a side of her that I can never know about any of my patients—what their lives look like outside of the therapy office. One on one, therapists get depth but not breadth, words without illustrations. Despite being the ultimate insider in terms of Julie’s thoughts and feelings, I’m an outsider here among all these people I don’t know but who knew Julie. We’re told, as therapists, that if we do attend a patient’s funeral, we should stay off to the side, avoid interacting. I do this, but just