Suzanne

I've just returned from a Saturday funeral service in Napa, CA.

Suzanne worked in our San Francisco office. She was a native of the nearby town of Napa.

She'd had pancreatic cancer. She underwent a brutal regime of chemo and the rest. Then it came back.

There was a large gathering of lifelong girlfriends, neighbors, her husband, mother, and friends from work.

The service was presided over by a Catholic priest. And a number of people got up to speak.

One of the girlfriends told the story of how when they were all sixteen, they walked about 20 miles on a whim along the side of a highway to visit a friend, only to find that she wasn't home! This was the first time the mother had heard this, and stuff like this kept the thing from being too heavy.

That and the story of how her first job after graduating Barnard College was as an editor at Playboy Publishing. ( " Sorry father!")

I don't know how people have the courage to get up and speak at these things, but it's a good thing.

They played this as the service ended.

After the service, we moved a mile down Napa's quiet Main Street to Angele Restaurant for a light lunch, where some of her many friends raised glasses of her Napa Valley Chardonnay in her memory.