Through the years, one
final gift I could give to my friends was to use my writing ability to eulogize
them. They keep dying faster than I am, though, and it has occurred to me that
there will be no one—no one who has really known me through the years—to eulogize
me. So I have begun to write for them what they would say if they had outlived
me. This one is the nameless hobo I was called on to bury along about 1970…
JRMcF
We never met each other,
and he didn’t know my name. I didn’t know his, either. But I’m glad he was
there.
I didn’t even know it was
Bloomington, the one in Illinois, where I died. Didn’t make any difference. Never
made any difference where I lived, either. I never got any more respect in life
than I did in death.
They had to bury me,
though, so the sheriff and the undertaker got the out-cast preacher to read the
words for the out-cast nameless hobo. I guess they figured we deserved each
other.
They just stood beside the
hearse, talking, the sheriff and the undertaker, didn’t pay the preacher any
more respect than they did me, just let him follow his nose to my pine box. They
didn’t even bother to walk over to hear him say the words.
So he got out his book and
gave me the whole treatment—every prayer and every scripture in the whole
funeral part of that book, just like that first funeral he did, when he didn’t
know better. He even said a little sermon, told a couple of stories. Nobody there
to hear. That was really funny.
Yeah, part of it was to
make the sheriff and the funeral director have to wait, but I was great with
that. Mostly, though, I liked it just because I finally got some respect. Yeah,
that preacher and me, we deserved each other.
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