Remarkably Dour Proceedings

When Joan Didion died last December, she left precise instructions for her burial. She was to be interred at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine following a brief and private funeral according to the rite of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. The service was to take place as soon as the church would allow, and only family and close friends were to be present. Hers was the third and final Didion-Dunne funeral, the first where she was not burying either her husband or her daughter.