I took the painting back to the carriage house and finished it there in time for Arch to have it framed and hung in the sunroom at the farm, facing out toward the garden and the meadow, where we would gather after we buried her.

seven

Jim sent the jet back down to bring Pancho and Murray and Teddy up for the funeral. I vacated the carriage house for the three of them and took the guest room at the end of the hall opposite the master suite.

The funeral was held in Saint Matthew’s Church in Leiper’s Fork, a little Anglican parish, to which my mother and Jim had retreated, both out of convenience and for the comfort of being around a congregation consisting of good country people rather than the social-club atmosphere of Saint John’s in Belle Meade. The priest spoke of my mother with sincere familiarity. In my absence, both she and Jim seemed to have become devout.

Here’s one reason to go to church: people will show up for your funeral. Little Saint Matthew’s could not contain the crowd that assembled on my mother’s behalf; the members of the congregation were pressed in by my mother’s many other friends and acquaintances. Initially, I assumed the Belle Meaders were there for Jim, or for Arch and Vanessa, but as it turned out, many of them had come to regard my mother as a friend. One after another, they cornered me at the visitation, to pass on some surprising anecdote or to assure me that my mother would be remembered always for her graciousness and generosity. Who was this woman they described to me?

I saw so many old faces—Kip Dodd and his wife, now retired themselves and living nearby in a farmhouse of their own; Ellen Creigh; a slew of old classmates and their parents. Just after we sat down, I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to find Sunny and Terrence in the second row of pews. Up to then, I had mostly kept my composure, even at the final moment in the carriage house, when Jim had sat up from his chair and grasped my mother’s hand and knew it was over. But when I saw Sunny and Terrence, my own sorrow poured out of me in streaming tears. Terrence embraced me across the pews. The years had changed everyone, but the bonds of childhood felt, at least, as if they were still binding.