My sister Luli died in August and I’m beginning to come out of the fog. Someone told me that in Jewish tradition a mourner has no obligations for a whole year; friends and family simply take over and care for her. For about a month I stumbled around, losing things, forgetting, unable to process information. I couldn’t read. I certainly couldn’t write. In between bumbled tasks and necessary conversations I lay on the deck watching birds at my new feeder.

I spent hours cleaning up my garden, neglected during the months of Luli’s illness. I threw myself into brute labor, digging up a whole new bed, cutting back the bamboo. I planted a memorial garden, with Luli’s doorstep goddess gazing benignly from one end. Sweaty and filthy, I jumped into the pool and cried.

Though in most things I was inept, cooking became solace. My self- and Luli-absorption meant Joe and Amanda had to put up with a lot, but they were treated to new dishes, and many desserts.

All this activity couldn’t protect me from the sudden flashbacks to her terrible last five months. She was miserable: in pain, sometimes delusional, helpless, angry. I went up to North Carolina five times to take care of her. At the very end we had hospice, and they were wonderful, but even they couldn’t overcome the fact that dying is no fun at all.

The experience has led me to the book How We Die, with its reader-friendly account of how each organ system responds to senescence, leading to death. For some reason it was a great comfort to learn that a miserable death is common – we weren’t singled out for the horror.

Luli pops into my mind constantly. An article in the New Yorker on mythical beasts would have been just her cup of tea. Sexual harassment? We would have talked for hours. When Bill Clinton said, ‘I did not have sex with that woman,’ she sent me this postcard. I particularly like the nun on the left.

 

My first (and last) cruise to the Bahamas would have consumed at least three phone calls. The Taste of the Bahamas walking tour was worthy of at least an hour, with all the different dishes, and the guide who clogged interesting historical information with lectures about super foods and magic cures.

Luli fills my kitchen. She was a professional cook, and assisted Richard Sax on Classic Home Desserts. It’s crusted with flour, stained with butter, and crammed full of recipes she sent me by email or postcard. She was my private cooking coach, always available with advice by phone. When I stir a bit of butter into the pan drippings to make a satiny gravy, add a spoonful of the pasta water to the fresh tomato sauce, rub the roast all over with salt, I always think of Luli, who taught me these tricks. 

 

I seem to be channeling her. When I’m not cooking I think about menus and imagine recipes. I have long friendly conversations with strangers. For a while every item of outlandish news produced an idea for a cartoon, but though I share her creative imagination, I entirely lack her graphic talent.

We buried Luli's ashes in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. It was a glorious October day, blue sky, and the trees in full color. Her little hole in the ground is under a huge English walnut tree. Nearby is a pond and a tall marble monument to Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. Down the way is Harriet Jacobs, the escaped slave who wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave-Girl. So Luli is in good company – Eddy would deny she's dead, and Jacobs was ungovernable.

Nineteen of us – all family – stood in a circle around the hole, with the urn that Ben found at a garage sale looking like nothing so much as a giant nipple. (Michael had a terrible time with TSA bringing the sealed urn from Raleigh-Durham to Boston.)

 

 

We shared memories, and sang. When we finished singing, we each took a flower from the bucket of flowers Clairie had brought, laid them in a ring around the hole, and threw handfuls of dirt onto that ridiculous urn at the bottom. We went on to a sumptuous lunch at Casa Portugal – Luli would have loved it – and then back to Esther's for pastries, tea and coffee.

 

The gathering was comforting and moving. I'm so glad to have my family, and that Luli's ashes are in that beautiful place, with my brother Dickie’s nearby. What stays with me is that bright ring of flowers – daisies, roses, snapdragons, mums – on the ground around her little grave.

 

Clairie took charge of arranging Luli’s grave marker. We wanted one of her cartoons, but Mt Auburn said no human figures, without even seeing her naked, cavorting woman. We settled for one of her cats, and the following verse:

The worst thing about being in your coffin
Is that you’re unable to eat as often.

I knew Luli would have liked people to laugh as they passed her grave.

  

 

 Now I have her picture on the cookbook shelf over the counter where I work, above the KitchenAid mixer I inherited. It’s not a surprise anymore each time I see it and remember she is dead and gone. I am purely and simply missing Luli.