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Then we made a list of the speakers. Tony looked at me.

“You know what we’re doing, Mugs, don’t you?” he said.

“No,” I said. “What?”

“We’re producing Dad’s last show.”

Yes, I guess we were. We hugged each other tight and continued producing. Then we got a call from the archbishop’s office and were pleased to learn that he would attend the service. That was nice—Dad would have liked that. But they informed us that, for this honor, only one person would be allowed to speak other than the archbishop. Guess he had a busy day.

“Thanks, anyway,” we said, “but we have a couple of presidents and several comedy legends who will be speaking on behalf of their friend, so we understand if this makes it impossible for the archbishop to attend.”

Presidents Reagan and Ford spoke. So did the archbishop (yes, he came anyway). So did Bob Hope and Milton Berle.

Phil emceed—beautifully. If ever a man was put in a spot to fail, this was it—taking on the role of speaking on behalf of a family’s adored patriarch. But it was as if he had reached into our hearts. He expressed it for all of us. I’ll always remember him saying, “He made us believe that he would live forever. But two days ago he proved us wrong and broke our hearts.”

The first speaker Phil called on was Milton, who walked up to the pulpit and said, “Thanks, Geraldo.” Good ol’ Uncle Miltie. He knew what to do. Everyone laughed. They needed to.

There were a lot of laughs that day from the comics. Bob Hope said that Dad was so religious he had stained glass windows in his car. There was also a memorable laugh that did not come from the pulpit. It started when Mother’s lipstick fell out of her purse, hitting the ground with a noisy clack, then began rolling across the floor. Terre, Tony and I watched it roll and started to giggle. As it made its way past the grandkids—first Dionne, Jason and Tracy, then Kristina and Kate—they started to giggle, too. And trying as hard as we could, none of us could stop, until we were all laughing hysterically. It was terrible. Our bodies were shaking, tears of laughter streaming down our faces. We must have looked crazy. We were.

For hours and hours, day after day, friends came to offer their condolences, eat heartily and make us laugh. And what good friends—Elaine, Herbie, Chuck, Julian, Barry, Kathie all came from New York to be with me. After a while, Terre, Tony and I decided to duck out and take a drive to the old Elm house. We just had a need to see it again. It had been, what, thirty years, since we had all left and Mom and Dad had built their big beautiful dream house on the hill, atop Beverly Hills, overlooking the city.

We drove to the corner of Elm and Elevado and parked across the street. I could see my old bedroom windows that faced the street. How many times I had watched from that window as a boyfriend rode away on his bike. It looked smaller. Does everybody’s childhood home look smaller when they’re all grown up?

We got out of the car. Let’s knock on the door. Maybe the owner will let us go inside. No, that’s crazy. We don’t even know these people.

We walked to the door and knocked. A nice-looking blond woman opened it.

“We’re the Thomas kids,” we said. “We grew up in this house. We just lost our dad and we felt a very strong urge to visit this house.”

The nice lady smiled. “I was wondering when you’d come,” she said.

“What do you mean? You were expecting us?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Your father used to drop by all the time, and he’d sit in the den and have a vodka with us, and talk about the old days. He loved this house.”

We were floored. We should have known. Dear, sweet, sentimental Daddy.

We entered the house.

“We’ll go outside,” the woman said. “Feel free to walk around.”

So we sort of meandered. I walked into the den first, where on Friday nights we had watched all the Capra, Sturges, Chaplin and Three Stooges movies. I remembered how I used to run the projector. Because I was the oldest, Dad had taught me how to work it, so when he was on the road, we could still watch movies.

Then the living room,