I had finished lunch when I decided to attend the memorial service later that afternoon for Juno Wasserman, who had died the week before, just shy of seventy. Juno had been with my mother at Vassar and Harvard, and I thought I should go at the very least to be able to tell my mother about it, for though they had fallen out I think they still considered each other best friends, and my mother had been in a great self-pity over their lack of resolution.

The service was taking place in a Buddhist meditation studio, in a loft near…