The Pull of the Moon_ A Novel - By Elizabeth Berg Page 0,42

was bad, we had only one bathroom and six kids. But then, all of a sudden, she was done with that. She launched herself into a new life where she felt she could say the hell with anything she didn’t like, and by God, she did say the hell with anything she didn’t like. She quit making dinner unless she wanted to, and she wanted to only about once a week. She wore these turquoise pedal pushers almost every day, big hoop earrings. She was really different, and at first this scared me, but then I realized I liked her better. She became a real person to me. She was interesting. After my father died, she moved into a small house that was entirely her. And she was happy, I swear, until the day she died. We knew exactly who we were burying.

He stopped talking then, and I thought, he’s remembering his wife, realizing she will never get older. He’s thinking, what in the world is this woman complaining about. But when I looked up at him his face was full of compassion. Of kindness. And then he asked, wide-eyed and calm, if he could please brush my hair. I stood up, and I was a little dizzy—wine and fatigue—but I went and got my brush and sat on the floor before him and let him brush my hair. And I knew that I was his mother and his wife, and it was the most tender and full thing I think I have ever experienced. I closed my eyes, and I thought probably his were closed, too. When he was finished, he laid the brush down beside him and thanked me. I turned around, nodded. I said thank you. He said yes, all right. Then he stood, stretched, and I stood too, and he held me close to him, hugged me. And then, for reasons that now seem a little bizarre but then seemed right, he kissed me. And I let him. And then I took his hand and led him into the bedroom and lay down with him. We didn’t kiss again, we didn’t do anything but lie there, holding on to being alive and knowing there was nothing permanent about it. Morning came, we had some coffee, and then he left. We didn’t say a word.

Dear Martin,

We need to make a will. We need to talk about what we want done at our funerals. We keep saying we’re going to do this, and we don’t, but we have to. I don’t want to figure out what to do with our money, I’m sure it will not surprise you to know that. But I do know how I want my funeral, and I’m going to write it to you because you never will listen to me when I try to talk to you about it.

I don’t want to be buried. I want to be cremated and scattered into the woods behind our house. I know you don’t like that idea, but I do. I want to be loose. I want to have instant integration with the elements. Why lie in a box delaying everything? And I am sick and tired of so many cemeteries. There could be parks there, children swinging. We can’t fit all these dead people on the earth anymore. I know you say you want to come and visit me if I go first, that you want to have a spot to sit and contemplate, but Martin, why get in the car and drive, why not be standing at the sink rinsing out your coffee cup and commune with me then? Why not sit in the den in the afternoon and talk to me? I can be everywhere instead of in a box in the ground, some weirdly designed thing that costs a fortune. I can’t be buried. What if I want to go somewhere?

Now the service. I do want a service. I am going to write something and I will update it if I need to, but I am going to write something for you to read to the people and it will have to do with trying to see the whole circle. It will be designed to let people feel joy, I would really like them to feel joy. Well, I would like them to feel pain too, to blow their noses into their damp hankies and shake their heads and say, Jeez, that Nan; but mostly I want them to feel that this