The Mourning Anchor

Rhea Gumbel has folded her hands in her lap and is about to cry. "He's distanced himself not only from me, but from the whole family," she says. "You love him and raise him, but you'd never dream this would happen."

She stares at the television, the box where her son lives, and then rolls her eyes to the ceiling: "If his father were alive, this would never happen. If he, for one minute, thought that they weren't looking out for me...."

After a long pause, her visitor gets up to go. "What time is it?" she asks.

"Two o'clock."

"Good," she says.

"Why good?"

"Only eight more hours until I go to bed."

March to the grave. High above a checkerboard landscape, Gumbel reaches into the pocket of his first-class seat, pulls out his Filofax and draws out a yellowed piece of paper. The creases are so deep that the paper threatens to rip at the touch.

It is the eulogy from his father's funeral, the one Gumbel wrote and delivered that spring day in 1972. He keeps it with him always. It ends: I say goodbye for those who knew him as "Your Honor." ...I say goodbye for those who knew him as Dick or Richard and thereby shared in the joys which come of fine and rare friendship. I say goodbye for those who knew him as family.... I say goodbye for my dear mother who knew him as husband.... I say goodbye for Gregory, Rhonda, Renée and myself, who were lucky enough to call him father.... Goodbye, Daddy. We love you so very much. God has taken from us and unto himself, the finest man we'll ever know.

He reads it once, cries a little, folds it up and puts it back in his Filofax.