MaryEsther and Louise Write Their Obituaries

MaryEsther and Louise were sitting in their rocking chairs on the front porch, reading the morning newspaper.

“Do you have the obits?" asked MaryEsther.


“I’m almost finished,” Louise replied, turning a page. “Bernie Schlossheimer died. Remember Bernie?”


“Yes, he was the fellow with the dog bakery that didn’t work out.”

“And before that he had a vegetarian grocery store in the German neighborhood.”


“That didn’t do too well, either. Those Germans like their meat. It says here he was selling plots for Pine Acres Cemetery when he died.”

“That was opportunity knocking, wasn’t it?” 


“Louise,” said MaryEsther, folding her section of the paper and placing it in her lap.


"Yes.”

“What will they say about us in our obituaries?”

“Something nice, I hope. Who’s on the social page these days? I hope it’s not that snippy Barbara What’s-Her-Name.”

“Who?”

“You know...that red-haired floozy who tried to get Charlie Fletcher to marry her last year. Remember how nasty she got when we told Charlie all about her and her charge cards?”

“Well, a man has to know that his wife will stay up all night watching QVC instead of soaking his socks and dentures. We just did our Christian duty, didn’t we?”

“Yes, we did.”

“Why don’t we write our obituaries now and give them to Charlie Fletcher for safe keeping? We can trust him to get it into the paper just the way we wrote it. After all, we voted for him three times.”

“And we make him cookies at Christmas.”

“And a cake on his birthday.”

“OK, that’s settled. Now what do we write about ourselves?” asked MaryEsther.

“Well, something nice. Something that will make people remember us and maybe cry a bit,” said Louise.

“Let’s say we were clean people. That’s a highly underrated quality these days. You just don’t hear people talking about taking baths anymore. Have you noticed?” 

“You are absolutely right,” said Louise. “Remember last month at the Ladies’ Guild meeting at church when Sarah Perkins was reading the devotional about being whiter than snow and she asked for comments? I stood up, and in my best elocutionary style explained how I’ve kept my underclothes so white all these years, and from there it was just natural to describe how I keep my toenails so clean. The secret is soaking them in lemon juice before my bath and then adding the lemon juice to my bubble bath water. ‘Don’t you just love lemon?’ I asked the ladies, and no one answered me. No one at all. They just stared at me like I had three heads. I do believe that bathing is no longer a priority in our culture.”

“OK," said MaryEsther, writing on a piece of lined paper. “We’re clean. What else can we say about us?”

“We volunteer every year to go door to door for the Heart Association.”

“But we only do two doors. Does that count? “

“MaryEsther, a door is a door. Someone’s heart might stop beating if we didn’t do those two doors every year. Did you ever think of that? We are every bit as important as doctors and nurses. We are single-handedly responsible for several people being alive. Now, that sounds much more important, doesn’t it?”

“OK. Now, how about awards or distinctions? Prizes, public recognition?”

“Hmmm. How about the time we won second place at the fair for our watermelon  pickles? That was 19....1956, wasn’t it? Everyone loved our pickles. Do we still have the ribbon we won? We could attach it to the obituary for proof. Maybe they’d like to put it in the Historical Society’s display case at the Court House.”

“OK.  We made pickles. But, Louise, that doesn’t sound very exciting. Haven’t we done anything exciting? I mean, the best obituaries are really exciting. Remember Wilbur Johnson’s obit? It said he was the one the firetruck ran over when they hired that silly Russian fellow to drive for the fire department back in 1973. There was even a picture of Wilbur on the ground and that great hairy Russian standing over him waving his arms like he was Leonard Bernstein. Remember? Everyone thought it was a Communist plot to get rid of Wilbur’s chicken farm. The John Birch Society had a heyday with that one.  They all came to Wilbur’s funeral and passed out literature about the Commies. Don’t we have ANYTHING exciting in our lives?”

Louise thought for a long moment. “Well, we had husbands...but...well.. you can’t write about ‘THAT’ .”

“OK. This is it, then. MaryEsther and Louise were clean people. When they knocked on two doors every year to keep other people’s hearts beating , they were known as those clean women who made pickles and knocked on doors. They had husbands. They had husbands who were happy and clean and ate a lot of pickles.

MaryEsther and Louise nodded. That about said it, they thought as they closed their eyes for a nap. 


It would be a good obituary.