I have been thinking that I should write obituaries for myself and my closest friends who are still very much alive. They would eschew the accomplishments and celebrate the essence. The collection would be called Nearly Departed. Here’s mine.
Joyce Linehan (she/her/hers) read a lot of books, but while reading a book, she found it difficult to concentrate sometimes, because she was always thinking about the NEXT book she would read instead of thinking about the book she was reading. This impulse was exacerbated when she read that the average avid reader gets to read 735 books in her life, which seems to her like a very small number. Along these lines, she once had a boyfriend who drove her crazy because he took too long to fix his coffee at the Starbucks. He would add cream and sugar and stir and stir and stir, while she added cream, replaced the cover, and walked, understanding that the coffee would stir itself as she moved. It goes without saying that they broke up. For Joyce, it was definitely not about the destination, and it was certainly not about the journey; it was about the NEXT journey, and the journey after that one.
She spent some years as a public official and as such, she attended many events at which the Pledge of Allegiance was recited. Instead of saying “one nation under God,” she would say “one nation under a groove,” because she figured that if Congress could add a total non sequitur sixty years after the fact, so could she. She believed that there might be a slight short circuit in her brain, because when she walked to her car, she often pulled her keys out of her pocket or her bag on approach, even if she saw a sewer grate between herself and the car. She knew she shouldn’t, but that message didn’t reach her hand until she had done it. As a result, she knew it was a wonder that she never lost her keys down the sewer.
She almost married a few times, but even she found she was difficult to live with, so she decided the risk of falling and not being discovered for days did not outweigh the risk of driving someone else to commit murder. Difficult, but selfless.
She thought that daylight saving time should be abolished, not so much because that meant more sunlight in the early morning, but because that would mean that people would stop calling it daylight savings time. She tried hard not to be the person who corrects those who make that mistake – nobody likes that person – but it definitely was not easy. Another similar issue she had was with the word “diverse.” She had a hard time not correcting those who referred to a person of color as a “diverse person,” because she wasn’t an idiot and knew that a single person could only be diverse if they were biracial, multi-ethnic, or maybe had dissociative identity disorder, which generally was not the case. She also took issue with the notion that a diverse group of people was a group of people of color, but kept herself from doing that out loud, hard as it was.
Joyce had some strongly held beliefs. She believed in democracy, justice and that dogs should have only one or two syllable names. She thought anything more was just pretentious. She also had a hard time with human names that were misspelled, mispronounced or otherwise confusing, but she tried not to hold it against the person who had the name, and tried to remember that they were probably named by a parent who was the real culprit. It wasn’t easy though.
She believed that adding flavors like hazelnut or vanilla to a perfectly brewed cup of coffee was an act of vandalism. She thought that toppings on pizza were unnecessary and undesirable, but that wasn’t a belief, so much as it is straight-up chemistry. She knew that great pizza is perfect because of the way the dough interacts with the sauce and the cheese. Especially the cheese. Adding onions or sausage or some other nonsense would be like adding a saxophone solo to the perfect pop song. She knew you just shouldn’t do it.
Joyce’s idea of the perfect vacation was a few days at home, not wearing a bra, reading books, and listening to music. So, if not for the disease and the terror and the dying, she might have really enjoyed COVID lockdowns.
The best rumor she ever heard about herself was that she took Polaroid pictures of the bands who stayed at her house, while they were sleeping. She wishes it were true, because that would be quite a collection and might even be worth some money. She also heard that when the record label she worked for wanted her to drop a band from their roster, she would ask them to play hangman, and spell out
Y O U R E
D R O P P E D
There may have been some truth to that one.
She spent a not insignificant amount of time thinking about epitaphs, but at the time of publication, had not settled on exactly the right one for herself. Contenders included: “She tried”; “Radio On”; and “I’m not a cartoon, I’m a girl,” because an old boyfriend told her she once exclaimed that in her sleep, and it was the TRUTH.
She will be remembered as someone who loved her friends, family, dogs, and country, and as someone who was never happier than when she was lost in a great song, play, book, or other work of art, or when the Red Sox were winning. She will also be remembered as a person who always had her glasses on her head. She hopes that at the end, she got to have a delightful last meal of rappie pie, fancy Italian soda and tres leches cake for dessert, which would have shown an impressively broad cultural range.
Joyce -- I think I would like to ask you to write MY obit! I certainly agree with you on coffee and pizza for starters.
Jack (the dog) agrees with a definitive piercing bark.