A Friend Of The Family

I have found my true calling. And I'm raking it in, hand over fist. I always knew I was a pretty good public speaker. At one time I was touring the lecture circuit, collecting honorariums equal in a week to what many earn in a year.

But the constant travel, the living out of suitcases, the dining in expensive restaurants and the entertaining (heads of state, celebrities...university faculty) was beginning to wear on me. Also, my family was clamoring for more attention. Never mind that my children were enrolled in the finest schools...that my wife had nearly a servant for every room in the house, and she could spend hours daily on the charities I founded to occupy her free time. My family wanted more of ME. And being the kind of person I know myself to be, I could understand why.

I decided to downsize. No, not the house or any of our hard-earned creature comforts. I downsized the speaking engagements. It all happened in what I would describe as an evolutionary manner. Some several years back, I was called upon by the bereaved widow of an old and dear friend, to deliver the eulogy at her husband's funeral.

I told the widow I was honored to be asked, and of course, accepted. After all, I knew that my presence on the dais would lend an emphatic underscore to this dear old friend's life. I was going to tell the stories of how he and I (at my urging of course) used to volunteer to feed the homeless. I would recount how we went into the Red Cross during a blood shortage and gave multiple pints each. (He gave two...I, the more robust of the pair, gave four.) I would speak, in tears, of how he took a bullet trying to save a dying soldier in Viet Nam and how I then had to pull him to safety, taking one myself in the process. These were the vivid, life-affirming stories I would tell about my old friend. I knew hearing these stories about her husband would make my old friend's loving widow happy. And I was happy for her.

But then the old biddy threw me a curve. She wanted me to tell funny stories about him. She didn't want his funeral to lament of a wonderful life, lost. She wanted a tacky celebration of the quirkiness that made her dear departed funny...and in her demented old mind, special. Being the soul of diplomacy, I smiled warmly and of course, accepted the challenge.

But deep down, I seethed. How dare she request I demean my old friend? The things that were funniest about him would also make him out to be, dare I say it, a fool. I had to be careful to avoid that path. I undertook to craft a speech that would be both funny and uplifting. It was a difficult task, for if truth be known, my old friend was a bit of a dimwit. Still, as I stressed over each and every syllable, I began warming to the idea. Not because the old coot was all that funny, but because with the proper turn of a phrase, I could make him seem so. I actually began giggling as I read my speech into the mirror. This was funny stuff!

I wouldn't tell the assembled mourners that he couldn't cook. I'd tell them of the time he boiled water to make hard boiled eggs and neglected to add the eggs. And then, while they were laughing at that, I would tell them how in a fit of pique, he tossed out the boiled water and began heating another pot to make coffee. I'd relate how when I questioned what he was doing, he replied that the first pot was "Egg water." He was now making "Coffee water." Before too long, I had constructed a eulogy that would have them rolling in the aisles. And you know, it did.

One gentleman at the funeral came up to me afterward and told me he'd like me to deliver the eulogy at his funeral. I pointed out to him in the gentlest way possible that he was still alive. When he told me he was suffering a terminal illness, what could I do? I humbly accepted. Over the next few months, he sent me various snippets about his life that were...unfunny.

But I didn't hold 4 honorary chairs in literature for nothing. In my hands, his Christmas eve picketing of a union busting ex-employer became a warm and cherished memory of he and his pals burning paper doll effigies of their ex-boss over an oil-drum and waiting for Santa. His battle with a landlord became a hysterical anecdote about pancakes covering the lawn of the man's home, neatly tooth-picked into the earth. And his brush with death in an airline crash landing, morphed into an entertaining anecdote about what not to do when the plane comes down with no landing gear.

He was thrilled, and insisted I take a small payment for all my work. I refused of course. A couple of months later, I was called by the man's nephew. His uncle had passed on. Would I come a deliver the eulogy I had authored. How could I refuse? I did so, on an dreary afternoon. But inside the chapel, it might as well have been warm and sunny. The assemblage had tears streaming down their cheeks. They were not tears of anguish,but tears of joy. When it was all over, several mourners left complaining of severe aches in their sides from laughing.

I began to get more calls. I had to refuse many, because I was still travelling to lecture. But as I was getting off the plane in Sandusky, Ohio, for a lecture to a group of lobbyists, my cell phone rang.

I am not easily startled. But this call took me by surprise. I was actually speechless for a brief moment. The old man's attorney...You will recall, I declined remuneration from him...was infoming me that I had been named in his will. In fact, I was named as his sole beneficiary. I had inherited 23 million dollars.

But there was, the lawyer continued, a complication. The old man's family (all nieces and nephews) were challenging the will. I infomed the lawyer that, of course, I happened to agree to a large extent with the family's point-of-view. After all, it is not in my generally altruistic nature to be a predator, else I too would have become an attorney. I told the lawyer to negotiate an equitable five way split for the four plaintiffs and myself. I made the old man's family happy...and after all, that's what I am really about. After legal fees, inheritance taxes and various and sundry items I won't go into, I made nearly three million dollars. And all because I did what came naturally to me. I performed a selfless act for a fellow human being.

It was at this point that I cancelled my lecture tour and decided that the time was at hand to go into a new line of work. I became a Eulogizer. For a small honorarium, I would travel (locally only) and deliver stirring, usually hilarious, speeches about the dear departeds. Sometimes I might do four in a day.

I held my captive audiences spellbound. Each and every eulogy led to inquiries for perhaps dozens more. I would simply hand my card to whomsoever inquired and they would contact me later. I called myself simply, "A Family Friend ." My phone rang off the hook. You'd be surprised how many people might cash in their chips within 50 miles of my home every week.

But as fine a writer as I am, (and the large wall dedicated to my numerous awards silently attests to that) I found that my, you should pardon the expression, "Deadlines," grew more and more tightly spaced as the business expanded. I began to take shortcuts. I recycled some of the older material...going to the trunk, so to speak. No one seemed to notice. As long as I peppered the speech with a few truths about the departed, I could say just about anything I wanted and the audiences would laugh. After all, it was all in good, clean fun.

Then one day, I left the speech on my desk at home. I was too far along to go back. I would have been late for the funeral and the deceased is the only one allowed to be "late" at a funeral. I had to recall what the man's life was about as I drove to the cemetery. And when I stepped to the podium, I spoke extemporaneously. I winged it.

I knew he had himself been widowed four times. His fifth wife was left a widow. So, I strongly intimated...in fact, all but accused him of being a womanizer! The audience burst into raucous laughter. He owned a restaurant. So I made up a story about how one day the Health Department shut him down for unsanitary conditions, and how he fought back by sending a meal to that same department, made from day-old food. They howled. I even recycled some Catskills resort humor by paraphrasing an old Henny Youngman joke. I said that on my last visit to the hospital, I found my friend...(They are always my friend.)...kneeling beside his bed praying to the Almighty. I told them I overheard him saying: "Dear Lord...Take my wife...Please!" His widow was so grateful to me for "getting" the essence of her husband, that she doubled my fee.

It began to sink in that no one speaks ill of the dead. And that's the whole point. If they know you're going to say something funny, they'll laugh at the punchline, no matter what it is. At the next funeral, I delivered the occasional phrase in Spanish. They laughed anyway. Why? Because they were supposed to.

The very next day, I observed that the woman being laid to rest in a graveside service had been a prostitute during the Korean conflict and that her two sons were illegitimate. They loved the story. None of it was true. But neither boy actually knew their father. He had died a soldier's death in that very war, and they just naturally assumed from my eulogy that their mother had always protected them from the truth.

So, now I have a staff of writers who flesh out the information that families provide me with. My chauffeur drives me from cemetery to cemetery on a daily basis and I edit and memorize my speeches en route. But, of late, I've grown a bit weary of the grind. And I have all these filing cabinets chock full of great material.

I'm thinking of going to an open mike night at a comedy club and trying out my material on the living. Who knows? Maybe I'll be the next big thing in standup.