The Third Gilmore Girl

by Kelly Bishop

I tend to prefer the company of animals to the company of people. Animals are honest—there’s not a hint of pretense about them, they just unapologetically are who they are, and their capacity to love and be loved outshines ours by about a million.

a five-cent postage stamp was far more affordable than long-distance phone calls, after all, and emails and texts were decades away.

I knew all that before I married him, so what was I thinking? Well, stop me if you’ve heard this one, but I guess I thought I could fix him. I forgot to ask if he wanted to be fixed.

Anyone who’s married to an addict who shows no interest in doing anything about it needs to be prepared for the probability that sooner or later, the only hope of surviving intact is to get out.

have nothing but admiration for women who give birth knowing that they’ll be giving the child up for adoption to someone who’ll take better care of it than they’re capable of. I couldn’t begin to imagine that.

My body, my responsibility.

It was a stretch for me to afford at $400 a month,

Besides, it was just dinner, and a girl’s gotta eat.

Lee and I didn’t just become husband and wife that day. We also became partners, lovers, companions, and best buddies who were always supportive of each other, even when work forced us to be apart for a while.

It was a couple of minutes past 9:00 a.m. on September 11, 2001. A gigantic plume of black smoke was rising from one tower of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, and we watched in disbelief as a plane crashed into the second tower, while a distraught newscaster tried to describe the incomprehensible nightmare that was going on across the river from us. Except for an occasional “Oh my God” and “What the hell are we looking at?!” we were speechless.

“the South Mountain” (I’m from Colorado, so trust me, it’s not a mountain, it’s just a big hill)

Then Star said, “You can kiss him goodbye.” So I simply kissed him on the forehead, left a lipstick print, and whispered, “Tell them that’s from me.” I left feeling unbearably sad but at peace, and so grateful to Star for letting me share some of the last precious moments of Ed Herrmann’s life. He used to say, “I’ve had three wives—the blond Star, the silver star [his first wife, Leigh Curran], and Kelly.”

Amy, being Amy, concluded that moving tribute to him as only she could, with a loving, heartfelt “Fuck you for dying.”

I was always Team Logan.

I was definitely Team Luke (Scott Patterson).

I hadn’t broken anything, so neighbors picked me up from the emergency room, drove me home, and helped me inside, and my husband and I became the cutest debilitated couple on our block.

“I love you so much it makes me want to cry.”

It was December 16, 2018, when Lee left. I’ve never said, nor will I ever say, “He’s gone,” or “He died.” It was, and always will be, “Lee left.”

More than two decades of watching him be knocked down by one cancer diagnosis after another, get back up again, and go right on with his life and our life together.

just looking at me across a room as if he thought I was the most beautiful piece of artwork he’d ever seen.

I’m not looking for love, because my late husband ruined that for anyone else who might come along.

grabbed my car keys, my purse, my Kindle, and my phone,

And now, here I am, in midsummer of 2023, a fully recovered, healthy nonsmoker who’s ready, willing, and eager to get back to work.

Don’t cry because you think your best days are gone. Smile because you had them in the first place.

“There are two advantages you have here—one is, you can be a great audience, because you really appreciate it from your heart, and the other is, no matter what age you are, you can always go back and take classes on the side.