My mother-in-law Ms. Larda had quite a shock when she read her own obituary in the church bulletin.
She happens to be sitting in church, waiting for Sunday Mass to start. She definitely ain’t dead.
I got to explain.
Ms. Larda got a thing about the one time she knows for sure her picture will be in the paper. A lot of her friends think about this too. If they leave the choice to their kids, God knows what picture they will come up with. Something with three chins, probably. Or smeared lipstick. That will be their final farewell to the world.
Now, a couple weeks ago, I had come across this ad online that shows a picture of a woman with the caption “Dress hot for work.” And it looks a lot like Ms. Larda, but with cheekbones and only one chin. And her hair is perfect.
Naturally, I sent it to Ms. Larda.
And this picture is running with the premature obituary.
Well, she bustles around back to the sanctuary, where she surprises Father Belchly, who practically jumps out his skin, because he just read the church bulletin too.
Turns out he just hired a new church secretary, and she got this obituary in the mail, and didn’t know no better than to put it in.
He escorts Ms. Larda to the front of the congregation and asks everyone to notice she is still alive despite what the bulletin says. Everybody claps real loud, and Sister Mary Olive the organist plays “Hallelujah.”
Ms. Larda told me later that she guesses that’s as close as she will come to being at her own funeral.
But there’s more to the story. Ms. Larda lives in a double house and her sons, Lurch and Leech, live on the other side.
She is sure they had something to do with this.
They ain’t home when she gets there, so she phones me to tell me all about it. And while she is going through the story, she notices she hasn’t sorted through yesterday’s mail, and there’s an envelope on top from The Times-Picayune. She opens it up and lets out a screech. Somebody mailed THEM the obituary with the picture. But it says- instead of “received her angel wings,” like obituaries sometimes do, this one says “was issued her pitchfork and horns.”
The paper sent it back with a note that said to please read over the obituary carefully —say what you want about the media, they got SOME sense — and also they need payment enclosed.
I decide I better go over there to calm her down before Leech and Lurch get home.
Turns out, we all walk in at the same time.
Lurch admits he put the obituaries in the mail. He went to look for stamps for something he had to mail and he saw two envelopes already addressed on Ms. Larda’s desk, so he put some stamps on and mailed them, too.
Leech says he saw them before Ms. Larda put them in the envelopes and he wrote about the pitchfork and horns on one of them because it was funny.
Then we all notice Ms. Larda is crying. Lurch steps over and wraps her in a big hug. “Aww, Ma. We don’t want you writing your own obituary. You won’t say the right things.
Like how you’re the best mama in the world.”
“And the best cook,” says Leech. And he joins in the hug.
“And you make everybody’s kitchen curtains,” I say. “And Carnival costumes. And prom gowns.’
“Get over here, Modine,” says Ms. Larda, and now we got a four-way hug.
“And we don’t want to use no fake picture of you, because you are much more beautiful than that model,” says Leech.
Which starts Ms. Larda to crying again, but this time in a happy way.
So we all stand there and sniffle and rock for a while, and it’s a nice way to spend a little time.
Then Ms. Larda takes out some king cake she froze and microwaves it, and we sit around and eat it, and talk about what what we’re doing for Easter.
Better than talking about obituaries.
