Archive
07/16/09 - (1)
The Obituarist
Then, in half-again-less than the bat of a gnat's eye, Just like that, He passed, passed away,
Passed so far past oblivion's last unmapped bourns That not even he realized He'd been relieved of his anonymous identity,
Forced to resign his highly nebulous credentials, By which his myriad superiors at the newspaper Had kept tabs on his nonwhereabouts.
Because his decease was marked by so little fanfare, It seemed as if it hadn't happened. And that was the gnat in the ointment.
Having failed to notice his going out, his demise, defunctness, He continued to wake up, get dressed, drive to work, Perform with the same diligence,
With the same severe degree of abstemious fastidiousness, Continued to win the same kudos, from his myriad superiors, For the obituaries he composed, with zealous facility.
Admittedly, he was a fanatic for accuracy, precision, details, A stickler for sticking to the facts, Not inflating or bloviating or hyperbolizing the truth,
For keeping his biographies concise, Wringing all the juice he could, from the life-fruit, While leaving the pulp and the rinds behind.
But never, until last Thursday, When he was assigned to write his own obituary, Had he faltered, locked up, failed to meet his deadline.
"Quite simply," Lifestyles editor Cas Strangways explains, "Ed Sugihara froze when asked to compose the obit Highlighting his own life.
"It was as though he'd seen a ghost. Apparently, no one had informed him of his recent death. And who was I to break the news to him?
"He just broke down, poor bastard, right there in my cubicle, Couldn't hold back the tears, just collapsed. His weeping got the whole floor off its game,
"Until I had no option but to summon the security guard And have Sugihara dispatched To a crypt we keep, on premises, for just such off-chances.
"Oh, and believe me, he didn't go submissively, Rather kicked, spit, and screamed bloody murder, Cursing me and all his fellow obituarists, for 'tricking' him.
"Yes, that's how he called it — his death. Imagine accusing us of 'tricking' him into accepting reality! Poor son-of-a-bitch!
"That he'd been assigned to write his own obituary Should have been the real kicker, which just goes to show you Some people just don't know when to call it quits,
"Go out quietly, chalk it all off to enough's enough, Take their walking papers and just disappear into the sunset, No questions asked — no fuss, no muss.
"Ed Sugihara wrote a very mean obit, no question, And we owed it to him to let him take a crack at his own. In my mind, just being dead is a lame-duck excuse.
"After all, he's not the first guy, on my watch, to die on the job, And he won't be the last. The others at least got a bare-bones draft to my desk."
07/16/09 - (1)
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