Nona called me from Chicago and said, "Emma's dead," and I started laughing because I didn't understand what she was saying. I repeated it to my boyfriend, whom I'll call Reis here. He was sitting right next to me, and I watched his nose crinkle and his head cock, and I was rewired so fast. I began repeating "Emma's dead" over and over again, at top speed, out loud. Eleven days later, Reis sat in front of me in my childhood bedroom on the Upper West Side of Manhattan while I practiced Emma's and my favorite camp song, "Changes" by Phil Ochs, all morning before I went to sing it at her funeral. It was at a stodgy funeral home meant for the very old, not the very young like Emma. And the funeral was a lot like the funeral home. It was very cold; lots and lots of poems were read, but I couldn't feel or see Emma anywhere. An impossibility, I suppose, since she wasn't there.
Wed Dec 02, 2015 11:09 am
