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WEDNESDAY, MAY 11

The day we’ve all been waiting for is finally here! I’m not just talking about our final day of work—it’s also the day I must answer the deep philosophical question this book’s been asking, which is what will I eat instead of dehydrated meatballs? I think you’ll be relieved to know I went with coconut chocolate balls. Finally, with this global political issue settled, you can return to your lives!

Alexis and I spend most of the day shooting a scene that takes place in a New York City hotel room. Rory comes back after having a fling and worries it was a mistake. Lorelai tries to counsel her. Alexis plays the scene with a perfect blend of panic and humor. The rest of our sets have been taken down already—this is the only one left—and as we finish up the scene, I’m already feeling sad. I’m going to miss Alexis so much, as well as the special connection we share.

The last shot of the night, and of the show, is a re-creation of a sort-of tunnel that Lorelai, Luke, and Rory go through, a short pickup of a shot that we started outside at night but didn’t have time to finish on the back lot many weeks ago. It will make sense when you see the show, but it’s part of a sequence that’s sort of magical; it’s set to the Sam Phillips song “Reflecting Light,” and has no dialogue. I can count on one hand the number of scenes I had over the years on Gilmore Girls that didn’t have dialogue, which adds to the strangeness of it all. Some people have started to assemble near the monitor: members of our production staff, our ADs and their assistants, some folks from the office. There’s nothing to see exactly, but I know they’re gathering around us to say goodbye, to be there for the end, and there’s an electricity in the air. We three pass silently together through this passageway five or six times.

And then, finally, that’s a wrap.

I’ve shed so many tears over these weeks and months that while I’m very emotional, I’m also nearly dry-eyed—almost like I’m in shock. Amy and I hug. Scott and I hug. Dan and I hug. Alexis and I hug. We all stand around, a bit awkward, not exactly sure what to do next. We take some pictures, trying to capture a moment that’s impossible to capture. In them, I look completely dazed.

Later, still dressed in the pajama bottoms I wore in the scene (and a top too, don’t worry), I meet some cast and crew at the Smokehouse, our neighborhood haunt, and we talk for a bit and say thank you and look at each other, still a little dumbfounded. We did it! Right? I mean, we did it, didn’t we? No one knew if it would ever happen, and we still almost can’t believe it really did.

After a drink or two, I head back to my trailer to pack up a few more things before it gets too late, and I realize I can’t find my blue coat. Did I leave it on set, like I always do? A call down to the stage tells us it’s not there. The ADs get on the walkies. They’ve all seen this coat around me, or on me, or near me almost every day, so everyone knows exactly what they’re looking for. Plus it’s long and puffy and blue—it can’t have gone far. But no one has seen it. When was the last time I had it? Today? I don’t think so. It was boiling hot all day, just like it was yesterday…yesterday! I remember now. It was cool in the morning, but by lunch it had heated up. I walked my bike over with Yanic and Melissa to the stage where they were serving our farewell lunch, then left the bike outside the stage, with both the green leather jacket I’d been wearing in the scene and my blue puffy coat draped over the handlebars. I wore the green leather jacket in a scene again today, so wardrobe must have picked up the blue coat too. Phew. They’re still here packing up—Brittany probably sent it to the cleaners for me. But, in the wardrobe trailer, she tells me that when she grabbed the green wardrobe jacket from my bike yesterday, the blue coat wasn’t there.

In all the years I worked there, I thought of the back lot as a sort of extension of my house. Since I often spent more time there than at my actual house, it made sense. But it’s different on the lot now. Warner Brothers gives tours there now, which means it’s much more crowded than it used to be, and there are a lot more people passing through. But still, throughout this whole shoot, I’ve left things all over the place and they’ve always come back to me. So I don’t want to think the worst, but maybe tweeting that picture when the show was announced made it a desirable or fun collector’s item for someone who was passing by? (By the way, if that someone is you, no hard feelings, but can you mail it back to my manager in Los Angeles, John Carrabino, no questions asked?) And for you at Scotland Yard, here’s the last documented sighting of my blue coat:

It’s just a coat, I know, but I held on to it for so long. I never wore it once after work ended on the original series, because how obnoxious would it be if you saw me wearing it in the grocery store, like, oh, oh, look at me! I wear a big puffy blue coat that says Gilmore Girls! I’m not even sure why I kept it. When I put it back on for the first time, there was a dried-out sugar packet in the pocket from 2008—I hadn’t touched it since then. We once had a terrible winter of moths eating all our sweaters, but somehow they spared this coat—even they must have known I was going to need it again. For Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, it was with me every day. It kept me warm and dry, and billowed out behind me as I rode my bike across the lot in the wee hours of night. So I can’t help feeling a little sad it’s gone.

But it’s our last day, and the coat has served its purpose. Our work is over, and it’s May in Los Angeles. The sun is blazing, and I don’t need it to keep me warm anymore. Of course, for sentimental reasons I’d prefer to have it. But I think of the seventy incredible days of this shoot, all the people I’m so thankful for, all the love that went into making this show. I think of Emily in her Marie Kondo scenes, giving things away because she’s learning a new way of being thankful for the past, realizing it’s just as important to welcome and embrace the future. And while her scene is about choosing to give things away, rather than losing them or having them taken, in the spirit of what the book suggests I decide that, rather than mourn the loss of my jacket, I will be thankful for the time we had together. I thank it for hiding itself in the back of my closet with only a dried-up sugar packet to keep it company all those years. I thank it for standing by, for somehow letting me know I was going to need it again. I thank it for getting me through all seventy days of “Winter,” “Spring,” “Summer,” and “Fall.”

I thank it for all it did for me, and then I let it go.

After all, we waited a long time to get the chance to finish this show, and now, finally, Gilmore Girls is really and truly over.

I mean, it is over, right?

Yes. It is. It’s over.

But seriously, didn’t you sort of think that ending was really more of a cliffhanger?

Hmmmm…