The Eulogy Competition

My father tells all three of us to write a eulogy and he’ll decide who gets to deliver theirs at our mother’s funeral in five days. Tom’s jaw sets, determined. Diane nods, eager to please. I narrow my eyes at Dad, resenting the competition he fuels between us, even as adults. I’m the youngest, nicknamed Flaky Suzy, and I will not win. The sweaty-palmed funeral director ushers us to the door. The flowers in the hallway are plastic but I swear I can smell gardenias, Mom’s favorite.

We have our marching orders and go our separate ways. Being the least responsible, I’ve been assigned relatively few duties, so I head to the coffee shop with my notebook and consider what to say about Mom.

Should I tell about the time she won top prize for flower arranging at the state fair? How I’d never seen her smile so wide, not even when Tommy was state swimming champ.

Or about when she was PTA president and planned the best school carnival ever, with a dunking booth. For one dollar we could try to dunk the principal and teachers. But that’s more Tom’s story, since he holds the record from that day.

The story about finding our dog, Lucille, is a good one. Dad was at work and the four of us searched for hours. Tom and Diane pedaled off on their bikes, and I rode in the car with Mom. She drove slowly and I hollered Lucy out the window. Diane is the hero of that tale, though, finding Lucy trapped inside our neighbor’s pool fence and bringing her home just as we pulled into the driveway.

Should I tell about the times Mom let me play hooky from high school? How she would call the office to say I had a cold and would be absent, my face growing hot, not with fever but with excitement that I’d get to spend the day alone with her. How we’d play gin rummy for hours. She smoked while we played, catching ashes in an old coffee can, sometimes letting me smoke too. At the end of the day, we opened windows, sprayed air freshener. Before I’d go to change out of my fake sick-day pajamas, she’d hand me the coffee can, lid on, to hide in my bedroom closet, a place Dad would never venture.

Should I tell about the time she confided to me she wanted a tattoo but couldn’t decide what to get? I’d sketched a rose as a suggestion. “Maybe my initials instead,” she said, and I penned a scripty MS. She smirked, saying we’d have to add her middle initial or it would look like it stood for multiple sclerosis. She never got a tattoo, but I wonder if we breathed life into the idea? If that was the day her body birthed the germ of the disease, marking her on the inside because ink never did bloom on her skin?

Or what about when she showed up at my apartment, braving the sketchy part of town where I lived in an artist loft with five friends, including boys. How we sat on the threadbare sofa, and I jokingly offered her a shot of whiskey. The bottle was on the coffee table from the night before, when we’d toasted my first modest commission from selling a painting. She accepted the shot, and a cold chill ran through me. She came to me because she knew I could help her—that I was maybe the only person who could. I held her hand when she said, “Suzy, can you imagine, at my age?” I didn’t judge when she said, “With you kids grown, I finally have a life again. No offense.” Her finger circled the rim of her glass.

We planned it for when my dad was away on business. I drove her to the clinic and stayed with her for two days at home, the first day telling Dad she was napping when he called.

I didn’t know then how often I would tell my dad half-truths. How it would continue long after Mom’s death. 

Three days before her funeral, in an uncharacteristic act of democracy, Dad tells the three of us to decide who will deliver the eulogy. We determine all of us will speak. It’s only fair.         

At the service, I listen to my brother and sister. To Tom’s precise words, no less meaningful for their razor-sharp exactness. I smile at Diane gushing about Mom being a wonderful grandmother, how happy she is that she (she doesn’t say she alone, but I hear it) was able to give Mom that gift.

I go last, of course, and I tone down my words, leaving only a little of the color everyone expects from me.

I don’t tell that when Lucille was lost all those years ago, Mom and I sat for a long time in the drugstore parking lot, not searching. How she said maybe we should just let the damn dog stay lost, then maybe Dad, who took Lucy hunting on weekends, would pay more attention to her again.

I can tell my family holds their breath, just a little, until I finish. And I enjoy, just a little, my power over them.

I will not tell them that there should be a fourth of us to speak. A boy or girl who would now be twenty-two years old. A younger sibling that never was. I wonder what our brother or sister would say if they could. Would they be angry about Mom’s decision, the one she questioned at times but was still glad she got to choose? Would they add to the unspoken chorus of who loved Mom more? Who loved her best? I know we all loved her best, each in our own way. But I also know there’s no competition, really, because I’m the one who knew her best.