Memories

Elaine's memorial was not the meeting of the minds I so desperately need; while I yearned for shared experience and stories, I received inside jokes and cross-references that I din't understand. In the dances her colleagues put on display, in the speeches her "best friends" gave (although each of the ten or so speakers thought that they were the closest to her, and she, in her privated ways, had never confirmed any suspicions): I felt a disconnect. People were mentioned; I didn't know who they were. Everyone laughed; I couldn't figure out why. I was forced to learn, over blue cheese and cranberries, in a suite that Brad Pitt and others had stayed before us, that I didn't know Elaine at all. Since her death, people have been saying how no one but her late partner truly understood her, because she was so very secretive and independent, but this felt different; it was like I had been dragged to celebrate the life of someone my family knew a long time ago, that I had no recollection of and little right to remember.


To elaborate on the point of one of the speakers, Elaine was a once-in-a-lifetime person, and will be remembered by the world, documented, celebrated for centuries. I'll join the masses, and rejoice in her accomplishments as an onlooker, never a friend.