100 Ways to Write Your Own Eulogy Dot Com
By Lyralen Kaye
How do you want to be remembered?
– Logo of 100 Eulogies appears on the screen in flash.– “Your Death, Your Style” appears in bold flashing letters. – “The Accomplishment Eulogy” appears next on the screen, also in bold letters, with photos of people receiving awards in a quick slide show. Barbara appears holding the biggest trophy of all.
My actors are here to support you in the eulogy of your choice.
The Tell-All Eulogy: The secrets you wish they knew.
Go ahead. You know you want to. And I’m here for you.
Suddenly all the lights in the house start to flicker. Beat.
Barbara walks throws herself face down on the floor. Begins to wail and kick her feet.
(Speaking too loudly.) Sweetie! Do you need to borrow money again?
Because you know the answer is yes. Yes, yes, yes! But, interest is at 10 percent. I think you owe me your house.
Get a bedroom ready. I’m moving in.
I don’t think that’s a good ide-
Haven’t gotten Brad out of his man cave yet, have you?–
How long has it been since you two had sex? Nine years? Ten?
We almost had sex during Covid…
Did you show him the tantric position from that picture I sent you? And where’s my granddaughter? Brittney! Brittney!
They don’t like to be called that.
Nonsense! It’s a fine “B” name-
Four thousand dollars would be great. Venmo me.
“Want to have coffee?”
END OF EPISODE 1
Abandonment Schmandonment
from My Other Country
a memoir by Lyralen Kaye
Let me just say this for the record. We live in New England. And that means every January, I NEED A VACATION!
So, circa December, 2008. My partner’s department at Harvard is being outsourced and as the one who makes more money, they’re, well, a little anxious. They huddle under three fleece blankets, a blue comforter, and a sleeping bag in the master bedroom, their hat pulled over their thick eyebrows—and then occasionally throw everything on the floor when they have a hot flash because being non-binary does not save you from menopause. They do manage not to throw the laptop upon which they are searching for jobs. Down the hall, I huddle over my desktop computer in the home office in our brand new condo—beautiful enough even for my collection of inner fae children—googling yoga vacations in Mexico so I can go somewhere warm to practice my Spanish.
“Do you want to come?” I ask my partner as they pass the office on their way to the bathroom, growling into their chest about some Internet problem or another.
“Don’t bother me!” they say. “I have to find a way to make a living!”
“Fine,” I tell them. Then I go back to my vacation fantasies.
On about the fourth day, my partner’s hat now stained with food (how do they get it on their head? I always ask myself) I say, “I’m going to Mexico. Do you want to come and do yoga overlooking the Pacific Ocean where it’s warm?”
“I can’t think about things like this! I may not have an income!”
“Well, then, can I use your credit card?”
It’s not as bad as it sounds; I am unable to possess my own credit card because I don’t seem to be able to understand that bills follow charging things. I’m fine with budgets, taxes, and fiscal planning and the stock market, but my father ruined my sense of consequence for all time when he gave me a credit card (in high school) for gas and phone and paid the bills without complaining.
“You won’t, you know, get a new wardrobe or anything?” they ask.
“I will only charge the trip and I will pay the bill when it comes.”
“All right,” they grumble. “Must be nice—”
“I’m spending some savings because if I don’t have a vacation I will go INSANE and begin blowing things up,” I tell them. “Probably starting with you.”
Of course, later we have to sit down like mature adults and talk about the vacation and whether they should go. How boring. My idea is that I should be able to get away from them (and their menopausal moods) for a few days before they join me, but this hurts their feelings (I put it extremely tactfully, like, “I could really use some space away from YOU!”), and then they don’t want to give up their part-time days with the woman with Lyme disease, so they don’t want to leave when I want to leave anyhow and this goes on for, I don’t know, about ten days. And then they decide they are going to blow me up if they don’t get a vacation and maybe if they’re on a yoga retreat they won’t be afraid of being in Mexico by themself (since I spent years traveling around the world by myself I don’t have these fears). So we book their ticket and then they get offered two jobs and takes one, so that’s all right.
Of course, this is just our normal insanity. Then we have to deal with flying separately. I come home from Zihuateno on the twenty-sixth of January and my partner comes home on the thirtieth. The whole day of the thirtieth I sit under the slick blue of a sleeping bag (I’m sick, I will say in my own defense) watching stupid television, the track lighting dimmed over the couch. I periodically stare at the mobile hung from the ceiling, a collection of silk leaves they bought me for Christmas. I wear my partner’s ugly bear-patterned fleece and their hat, which, considering my need for excessive hygiene (I am my mother’s child—did I mention she vacuumed about three times a day?), I had previously washed. The cell phone lies silent on the bookcase behind the couch, waiting for each of my partner’s five phone calls, telling me that each lap—taxi to airport, airport to airport, airport to airport, airport to taxi, taxi to our street—has been accomplished successfully. By phone call three I suddenly decide that it is untenable that they used the sturdy white laundry basket that was mine to store their junk in and I toss the junk on the floor and start doing laundry using my laundry basket. I sort of know this is suspect (crazy!), so I warn them about what I’ve done on the phone. They say, “Oh, I didn’t think you wanted it. Just take it, I don’t care.”
Therefore, my first attempt at a fight foiled, I start trawling for another. When they finally get home, after we have a crunching hug and cling, after they’ve brushed their teeth because I said their breath was stinky, after they’ve told me about the last days of yoga with the instructors in their identical outfits (don’t ask) I start in about the last day of our trip two years before in Hawaii, when they lost the key to the rental car while snorkeling and we had no way to get to the airport.
“That sucked, you know,” I say.
“Why are we talking about this?”
“You never really apologized. Apologize now.”
They look at me.
“It was very stressful.”
“I’m sorry,” my partner says.
“Say it like you mean it. Just say it, okay? Just say it.”
“But this is—”
“Just say it.”
My partner looks at me out of travel-blurred brown eyes, their thin hair falling over their tanned forehead. They take a deep breath. “I’m really sorry I scared you when we were in Hawaii two years ago,” they say.
“Thank you,” I tell them. And then I start to cry.
“Honey, what is it? What’s wrong? You’re acting really crazy, even for you—”
“I can’t stand it when you’re on a plane and something might happen to you like dying and I get really scared and then I have to wait all day. It’s too hard to love someone so much when something might happen to them.”
They take me into their arms. “I get really scared when you’re on an airplane, too,” they say. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, ever.”
Then, you know, we get the Kleenex out and blow our noses and take our fucked-up and crazy selves off to bed. Where we hold onto each other all night long.
