We Are Gathered Here Today
I lied in the first eulogy I was asked to deliver.
I wrote it by hand on college ruled notebook paper and went out to the garage to time myself reading aloud. If I enunciated and read slowly it took just under a minute, but a minute was enough—I disliked the deceased man and had burned through all my generosity.
“Friends and family,” it began, “We will miss Pete down at the plant. He was a good guy who once brought an extra sandwich when he knew the new guy would forget his lunch.”
What the eulogy didn’t say was Pete put his hand up my wife’s skirt at the company Christmas party two years back and it took three of our larger guys to keep me from going after him with a tire iron.
But what can you say to a room full of mourners? Politeness reduces you to vapid nonsense. “Pete leaves behind a wife and two lovely children who will need our prayers and support.”
What I wanted to say was, I wish I had killed the son of a bitch myself.
And the second one: my uncle died of cancer in his 70’s. That eulogy went: “Norman loved God and his wife Michelle, and was famously superstitious.” The moment he died, a black cat was sitting outside the door of his hospice room. I was trying to decide if it meant anything, but the fire alarm went off while his wife was mid-wail and the the color was still draining from his body. It was just a drill, and what it meant was clear: go ahead and try—just try—to think of anything as sacred.
And once again: a friend from high school, beaten back to his parents’ basement by alcohol and an impenetrable grimness, swallowed the contents of his family’s medicine cabinet and then went out to shovel the walk. “Roy fought a long war against his demons, and lost,” that one began. His embarrassed parents spoke to no one at the funeral. What I felt was, okay, but who hasn’t wandered the lonely rooms of his 30’s and felt drawn to the knife drawer?
How do you even begin to say something true, when we’re all in cheap suits and the priest is checking his watch?
Once, I spent a night in an interstate motel in some Midwestern town, and woke to the sound of three barking sobs, quick as gunfire. I went out in sweatpants. The man who stood farther down the walkway, smoking at the railing, spoke only French. He gestured to his wedding ring, then the door to his room, where I imagined his wife slept. Then he did a dramatic windup and pitched his ring into the dark of the parking lot, where it didn’t make a sound.
Where is there room for this story when people gather around the grave to talk about this man?
Facts: We all spend too long mistaking our parents for people who know what they’re talking about. That friend who quit smoking will smoke in secret for the rest of his life. No pleasure is ever what it used to be, but Christ—just try to give them up! Your spouse will lie next to your snoring shape on sleepless nights and think about divorce; you may wake up speaking French in a world where she no longer loves you. The point is, it’s too late and everything is crumbling.
Is the purpose of a eulogy to console, or to warn? I often want to stand a little straighter, say something to get the teens in the far pews to look up from their phones, tell the toddler gumming the hymnal to pay attention:
The truth is you’re all but certain to catch the scent of your grandfather’s cologne in your own house, on a quiet afternoon long after he’s dead. Or the mirror will one day report that you are, in fact, your mother. What I’m saying is there are worse horrors than time and decay—like realizing you never had a chance to begin with.
But here’s another fact: there is nothing better than cooking with a woman who loves you. And another: there is no relief more profound than handing your heart to someone who will cherish it. There are redeeming qualities to aching this much. Everything hurts, but everything is worthwhile. Go ahead and love that person! Find the line and cross it. Scar your knees at a new temple. I want to tell the mourners in the church to get up—flee! You’re wasting your time kicking around in this ash when there are new fires to start.
Instead, I wash my hands and dab my face and stand at the back—ready, when called upon, to tell one lie after another.
