Eulogies

    My mother sends text messages with pictures of my things.
   “Do you want this?” she asks.
   “No,” I’ll say. Or sometimes, “yes,” especially if it’s a book, and especially if it’s a book that’s been signed.
   
   My father sends text messages with pictures of things.
   "Do you want this?” he asks.
   “No,” I’ll say. Or sometimes “yes,” especially if it’s a book, or if it’s a baseball glove that I’ll never use again but remember him throwing a ball into at some point, or if it’s a ticket stub to a Cubs game that I will stuff into a drawer and never look at again.
   
   They mail me boxes of my old things, heavy boxes full of mostly old books, yearbooks, notebooks, sometimes old Bears jerseys, Blu-ray discs. I go through them and the way that the boxes smell like the musty old carpet in their basement makes me curl in on myself.
   I spend a few hours sitting in a pile of my old stuff, craving the smallness of the townhouse I grew up in, searching for the claustrophobic mundanity of the Chicago suburbs. I look through old yearbooks and see my own face in freshman, sophomore, and senior years. I’d boycotted junior year photos, and I try to remember what the boycott was for, and what it proved, and to whom.  
   I want a glass of wine, suddenly and sharply. I want something to focus on besides my past.
   I feel like a rejected prom date.
   I feel like an empty photo album.
   I feel like a toddler learning to walk, frustrated when I end up on my ass.
   I feel.

   “How are you feeling?” I ask my sister via text. She’s restarted treatment. I worry for her nearly constantly.
   “Fine. Nauseous. Stomach pain.”
   “Lame. Can you eat some weed?”
   “No. No drinks either.”
   “What the fuck?”
   “I know. This whole cancer thing fucking blows.”

    My mother has also been diagnosed with cancer. I wonder if she can put it in a box and send it to me, package it in a large Priority Mail box with my sister’s. I can hide it with the other boxes they’ve sent.

    My office is in the basement of my house and there are four closets in it. One of them has a large pipe that must do something, and a very, very large bucket of paint from when the house was renovated. It’s called Agreeable Grey.
   The second hides the furnace.
   The third has some dusty shelves. I want to take the cheap looking door off and make it a bookshelf. It’s been four years since we moved in and the door is still on it. It’s usually where I hide my Christmas and birthday gifts.
   The fourth is full to the brim with boxes.

      Whenever I empty a new box, I can’t get everything back in it the right way. It gets fuller and fuller and all of a sudden the top won’t close and I get nervous that my husband will come down and see the wreckage, so I desperately push everything back into the closet.
      Every time I open that closet door I get a little weepy. Sometimes the door gets stuck on a box, and I have to yank it open and the smell will hit me all at once, and I will be so lonely for a moment it will knock the wind out of me.

   I’ve been writing their eulogies in my head for so long I can barely remember when I started. I think I always assumed I’d have to be the one to give them all; mom and Christi can barely make it through a sweet greeting card without bursting into tears, and dad can barely speak in front of five people, let alone a funeral.

   Mom’s retirement party is a decent rehearsal. So many people are here that I emotionally shut down. I take half of an Adderall to try to force myself to feel comfortable in this skirt and crop top outfit I’ve put on, and to take the edge off the Miller Lites I’m putting back.

    She’s been a school administrative assistant for so long that she’s met roughly four billion teachers and administrators and aides and librarians and janitors, and they all love her. They all know who I am. I know some of them, some just know me from “oh my god your mother talks about you all the time” stories.
   I am asked to give an impromptu speech. I tell everybody:
   Everyone who’s ever known Pam tells me that they absolutely love my mom. I tell them about how one time a boy in high school told me that he was having a hard time at home with his parents’ divorce and his dad often forgot to make him lunch, so Pam would make him peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the office, and how they were the best peanut butter and jelly sandwiches he’d ever had. She is not just my mother, she’s always been everyone’s mother, and maybe someday soon she will rest, and she will care for herself as much as she’s cared for everyone else.
   People cry.
   Mom is asked to give a speech too, but she wrote it out beforehand. She doesn’t think she can get through it herself, so she asks my sister, my niece, and me to read it.
  We trade off paragraph by paragraph. By the end it’s just up to me. Everyone else is crying too hard to finish their parts.

   “So mom has cancer,” is how dad breaks the news to us.
   We’re sitting on the patio at Spears in Wheeling. I’m visiting home for ten days and I’m being as distracting as possible to the family. I should probably be doing some work, but instead I am ordering a whiskey and blackberry drink with my sister at noon on a Friday and convincing my mom she will like a paloma even though she doesn’t like grapefruit.
    We both look up at them.
   “Tactful,” I say, which is also incredibly not tactful.
    They spend twenty minutes explaining all of this as if we’re not well versed in the cancer thing. Christi has had it for twenty years, or nearly. I know this inside and out. I barely even feel the stomach drop anymore.
    It’s only twenty-four hours after the retirement party and I immediately think: Well. That was a nice test run for the eulogy.
    My gut tells me not to say that last part out loud.
    I feel like a forgotten water bottle in the backseat of my car.
    I feel like a throw blanket the dog slept on all winter.
    I feel like the pear tree in our yard in Idaho that the bear took down last fall.
    I feel.

    Later, when it’s cold and I am alone because my husband is out of town, I am watching House Hunters and it takes place in Arlington Heights. I text Christi because she lives there and I know she’ll think this is funny.
    “House Hunters is in Arlington Heights. These people are blown away by these houses. It is killing me.”
    She texts me back, asks where they are. I tell her where the drone shot is, but explain it’s probably not actually anywhere close to downtown. It’s funny how the shows make it sound like it’s basically Chicago when it is not.
    “I’m starting immunotherapy tomorrow. Radiation after that.”
    This is how we communicate the big things, my family and I. Sometimes we don’t do it at all. Sometimes we tell mom and then she says: “remember to tell your sister.”
    I tell her that it sucks, and that at least she’ll be done before Christmas. She tells me that she can’t drink at all. For any of the holidays this year.
    “People don’t survive holidays without alcohol,” I text her back.
    “I know.”
    “Maybe you can be California sober? Like, no ecstasy, but maybe a beer and a gummy?”
    She promises to ask her oncologist if this is a possibility.

    I don’t exactly forget to tell Christi things when they happen to me, but it’s harder to tell her. You’re supposed to tell your parents when things are wrong. When I’m sick I still want my dad’s soup, and for my mom to lay in bed and watch Disney movies with me. But I don’t ever want to tell my sister when I’m hurt, or sick, or sad.
    I don’t ever want to tell her anything that will make her worried. I don’t ever want to make her more scared.

    Bryan meets me in Chicago for my niece Taylore’s high school graduation. She doesn’t know about her grandma yet; it makes it hard for me to talk to her. I look at her face and think about how much she’s been through and I want to cry.
    We get dressed up and sit in the bleachers around the football stadium and listen to them read seemingly endless names of children who are pretending to be adults, and I want it to be over so badly. I wish they would just read her name; she’s the only important part. I know that’s how everybody feels about their own kid, but I feel it so strongly that I feel like no one else can possibly feel that way as strongly as I do.

    Christi never tells me she has cancer. Mom tells me. Because she found out when she was pregnant, of course.
    Her husband, Paul, tells her to go to the doctor over and over and over again. There is a lump in her back, and it’s weird and hard and not a muscle knot.
    “It’s not a too-mah,” she says, like mom always does. We all agree that Kindergarten Cop is an actual masterpiece.
       It ends up not being funny when it is a too-mah.
   
       Mom is a cleaner. She likes to clean things out, to make space. She calls it purging. This is how I end up with these text messages.
       “Do you want this?”
       “No.”
       When I am visiting home she pulls out boxes and boxes of pictures. They are slightly out of focus but at the time they were taken, they were remarkable. There are photos of everything. Everyone. And they’re all organized into neat drawers. She is amazing with a label maker.
       “Look at you,” she says. She is smiling so hard. She hands me a photo. It is of my sister and I in the old kitchen, white square tiles on the floor with buttercup appliances and Formica countertops behind us. We are sitting on tan leather kitchen chairs with wicker backs. I am maybe three, Christi thirteen, and we are each holding a pumpkin. Mine is just covered in mad marker scribbles, the insane ramblings of a toddler who is thrilled to be participating in an activity with her sister. Christi’s is actually carved, crudely, with a frowny face.
       I take a picture of the picture and send it to Christi.
       “Why your punkin so sad girl?”
       “I was a teen, teens are sad.”
       You’d never have guessed. She looks genuinely happy to be next to me, smiling with her sad pumpkin. I am smiling so hard that my eyes have become tiny little lines, like I’m a cartoon character. I hand it back to my mother. I don’t know why there are tears in my eyes.
    I feel like the mystery crumbs at the bottom of every woman’s purse.
    I feel like the cliffhanger ending of a bad book.
    I feel like the girl who runs upstairs instead of out in a horror film.
    I feel.
   
    A lot of the boxes in my office closet are full of books I’ve never read.
    I go to the bookstore and buy new books fairly often. I read those books. I read a lot of books. But the books in the boxes stay in the boxes.
    One of my boxes has a photo of me with my sister at my high school graduation. I can barely look at it. It makes my stomach hurt.
    I am so happy in that picture.
    Neither of us know she has cancer in that picture.

    I would start Christi’s eulogy like this:
    My sister is ten years older than me. Or was. I guess in ten years we will be the same age. You would think an age gap like that would make it hard. And maybe it did for a while.
    I was obsessed with her. She was my idol. I was her for Halloween, once. Every time she went to a school dance, I would put on my fanciest dress and make her take Homecoming or Turnabout or Prom pictures with me. I wanted to be with her all the time. She was the coolest person I knew. But it’s hard to be close to someone who is in such a different part of their life.
    But all of a sudden one day I woke up and she was my favorite person. The person I wanted to be around, not the person I wanted to be. And that was so very important to me.
    The day I broke up with my high school boyfriend she came to pick me up and we went to get ice cream. She asked me what I wanted. And I didn’t know.
    I cried in her convertible Mustang. She cried with me.
    I’d never felt less alone.
    I’ve never felt more alone now, now that she’s gone.

    Years ago I noticed my dad’s hands starting to shake.
    “Have you noticed dad’s hands shaking?” I asked my sister, and mom.
    “Yea but like, what are we supposed to do about it?” was essentially what both of them said to me.
    Nothing. He never lets us do anything.

    Dad and I get off the train at Grayland and there’s construction everywhere. I haven’t been to a Cubs game in years; I had no idea this was all happening. We wanted to go to the Booze Hound for drinks before the game. It’s a ritual.
    “We can walk around,” dad says.
    I look at his ankle as he hobbles down the new wooden stairs.
    “Road soda?” a man (child?) asks us as we walk by him. He has an open case of Coors Light. I nod and he hands us each one. He tells us to have a great game.
    “I missed this Midwestern hospitality. Is this legal?”
    “Walking down the street with a beer? No.” He cracks it anyway and limps down the street.
    “Can you walk this far?”
    “I’m not that old,” he says.
    By the time we get to the end of the street we realize we actually can’t get to the Booze Hound. It feels like someone threw an unopened can of beer at me, like a fastball to my gut. We have to walk back to find a cab.
    “Can you walk all the back? We can try to get a cab here.”
    “Stop it, I’m fine,” he says, finishing his warm road soda. “I’m not that fucking old.”

    They are that fucking old. They’re getting so old. That’s what the boxes are about, I know. They want to clear things out, this is the big purge.
    It’s the hardest box I’ve ever had to open.

    Mom texts me. Always texts. She knows I won’t answer a phone call. Phone calls are one of my biggest fears, maybe bigger than clowns.
    She texts me and asks me how I am even though I know I should be asking her how she is. I have a hard time asking people how they are. I just want to give them things and hope that they’ll understand that I don’t feel well. I don’t feel well about anything.
    “I’m fine,” I tell her, even though I don’t feel like I’m fine. I don’t ever really feel completely fine. Maybe that’s why I always say I’m fine. It’s so Midwestern. “How are you?”
    “Tired, but good! Going through boxes. Feels good to purge.”

    I pull out another box and find my senior yearbook. It is full of heartfelt goodbye letters in fun-colored markers. I miss the sincerity of them. I wish that these were still my biggest problems.
    I feel like a Hallmark movie.
    I feel like a poorly written YA romance novel.
    I feel like an Instagram post made by a sad teen.
    I feel.

    “Did you do your football picks?” dad texts in the family group text.
    “Yes on it,” I text.
    “He worries about you,” mom says.
    “I don’t make picks,” Christi responds.
    “Tell Taylore to make hers,” dad texts.

    “You can talk to me about Grandma if you need to,” Taylore says. Via text, of course. She does like to talk on the phone. She likes to talk all the time. She is like her mother. But she also knows I won’t pick up the phone.
    “I know it, girl, but I’m supposed to be here for you,” I say.
    “I know that but also I’m well versed in mom with cancer and us anxiety girlies gotta stick together.”
    I’d always pick up the phone for her. She might be the only one, I think.

    It’s getting cold out.
    My stomach hurts when I drink beer lately, so I fill a pint glass with ice, gin, and Kirkland brand lime soda water and sit down     on the couch. I put on a sitcom I’ve watched three thousand times in the past.
    I can’t handle new things right now.
    I am comfortably uncomfortable in the boxes.  

    My dad’s eulogy would start like this:
    If you leave a drink on the table, bar, anywhere, Larry Kupsco will magically appear out of nowhere and demand that you finish it. There are no fallen soldiers here, not in this family. And the man was the first one to invite you to be part of the family.
It probably comes from being the youngest of seven and having to fight for what’s yours, though Lar Bear was a gentle giant. The man only knew how to do one thing, and it was give. It was to constantly give to everybody. My friends used to come over to our house and sit on the driveway, and he’d grill barbecue chicken and corn and potatoes for us, bring us root beer and Doritos, Drumstick ice cream cones. He was the first person that demanded to buy you a beer, pay the check, buy you the toy you didn’t need but wanted.
    The man was the word “give” personified.

    I ask my gin drink where my ashes would be scattered if I died today.
    Where would my father’s shaking hands spread them? I assume Wrigley Field, maybe a bit on Soldier Field if he could get close enough.
    I picture my mother’s hands, bony and thin, flat nail beds just like mine, ashes slipping between her knobby knuckles as she rides the American Eagle at Six Flags in Gurnee.
    I see my sister taking a vial of my ashes to some amazing library somewhere, or a large independent bookstore, and putting me behind the horror section, hopefully left to scare some unsuspecting patron in the future.
    My gin doesn’t answer.

    Tonight I can’t stop thinking about my parents getting older.
    I have friends that have dead parents, and it overwhelms me to a point that I can’t breathe, like when I was standing on the Jackson number twenty-six bus going to class, and it would stop so quickly that someone’s elbow would ram my rib cage and I’d have nowhere to run to. It immobilizes me.
    I keep copies of our wedding vows in my wallet for nights like these. A teeny portable box that stays in a teeny portable closet. I read them when I feel breathless. I read them to remind myself that the future still exists. I read them to remind myself that people lose their parents and still have family.
    I feel like a Judy Blume novel.
    I feel like a coat that’s too warm for the conditions.
    I feel like an over-packed suitcase.
    I feel.

  My eulogy for myself would start: