Dear friends, family and visitors to The House Next Door:
As you can imagine, it has been a difficult few days. As of this writing, the medical examiner’s office has not reached any conclusions about the cause of my wife Jennifer’s untimely death. When my younger brother Jeremy called them yesterday, he was told that they probably would not know anything until Monday at the earliest.
But among all who knew here, there is a collective sense that we should proceed with some kind of memorial anyway, with or without ashes to scatter. So we’re moving ahead.
An informal memorial for Jennifer Dawson will be held this Thursday, May 4, at 2 p.m., at the Strawberry Fields Memorial in Central Park. We’ll say a few words about Jennifer, and when we’re done, we’ll return our block, the State Street Cathedral Block in Brooklyn.
Around 4 p.m. there will be reception at St. Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral, where Jennifer worked as a secretary during the day. The reception will last a couple of hours, and if anyone wants to hang out after that, we’ll walk next door to our house and do it there.
The 2 p.m. memorial service is open to the public. Anyone who feels a need to be there is invited and encouraged to attend.
I apologize for the short notice, but all things considered, I think it’s better to let out-of-town friends and family grieve and remember now rather than subjecting them to the emotional and logistical difficulty of making a second trip to New York after the medical examiner’s office has finished its work. If anyone has any questions or needs directions, you can contact me at [email protected].
I will close by collectively thanking everyone for their condolences. Whether delivered by phone, email or via the comments section of Alan’s post yesterday, your kind words have been a great help to Jennifer’s family when they needed it most. When things settle down again in the coming weeks and months, I will attempt to thank all of you individually for your compassion and support. It has truly been extraordinary. As long as we live, none of us will ever forget it.
Love,
Matt
This article was originally published on The House Next Door.
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