Obituaries. (Patreon)

While my mother and brother are on their morning walk, my father and I go through the obituaries. We take turns reading them out loud. The language is so boring and repetitive. You see the exact same phrases so many times. Words that were clearly meant to be respectful and traditional come across as formulaic and stupid.

“So-and-so will be sorely missed” might be true, but it also sounds like your loved ones copied your obituary word for word from someone who died yesterday.

“They might as well just write, ‘This is an obituary,’” my dad says.

“This is an obituary,” I say. “These are the words you put in an obituary. Thank you for taking the time to read my obituary.”

There is nothing about actual people in any of these memorial postings. There are no mistakes, no great regrets, no broken promises, no stupidity. There are no triumphs. No shining moments of pride, no redemption, no happiness. The language is identical for everyone, filled in with the applicable figures. Age. Number of children. Facts. It’s like reading out loud from a database and trying to imagine a real human being from just the numbers.

You could actually write a computer program to generate these, and nobody would ever know the dif- ference. An 89-year-old woman, survived by a husband, three children, and four grandkids? No problem.

       my @entire_human_life = ('89', 'F', 'Stroke', 'husband', '3', '4');

“Goddamn it,” my dad says today. He points to a name. It is a short obituary. Even more clichés than usual. After a long battle with cancer, passed away in his sleep, surrounded by loved ones, etc. Aggressively standard. The kind of obituary that we love to make fun of.

“Surrounded by nameless loved ones,” I say, but my father’s smile is gone.

“I went to high school with him,” he says. “We were best friends.” My father rereads the obituary. “Long battle with cancer,” he says. “Ugh.” He tosses the newspaper onto his side table in disgust, and just like that our game is over.

“I meant to call him,” my dad says.

I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to say “I’m sorry,” or any other empty condolences. We spend every morning making fun of all that. But it seems like I should say something. I guess that’s where clichés come from, isn’t it? Too many people say something just so they can say something. Because they feel like they should. But when there’s really nothing to say, anything will sound empty. My father is sad about an old friendship he lost. That’s something worth being sad about. So I’m quiet. We sit in silence, and my father looks out the window.

Eventually, though, he remembers that I’m here. He turns back to smile at me. He picks up the obituaries again.

“Okay, who’s next?” he says.

“We don’t have to.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he says. “Of course we have to. This is research for when you write my obituary. Who else could I trust with this? Sunday, I am counting on you to not let anyone say that I died surrounded by nameless loved ones. Or that I lost my courageous battle with cancer.”

“I’ll tell people you won,” I promise him.

“Exactly!” He laughs. I love it when my father laughs. “You tell people that. The cancer is dead. I did what needed to be done. I’m a hero.”

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This is an excerpt from my novel Malagash (It came out Oct 3rd! They're shipping now! Click here to order or order it from your local bookstore.) I am going to be posting chapters here, in the hopes that you like it!