Joan swallows incorrectly. “I—”
“I hope you didn’t, because I know that you know that it is our mission to foster a safe space. I hope that if you had read the comment, it would have been obvious to you that such a comment grossly violates our Respect the Deceased Policy, and you would have deemed it unfit for publication.”
Joan nods at an ambiguous diagonal. Sylvie’s crunching has paused.
“This is why we assume that you did not, in fact, see the comment. It would be alarming to us if you actually read the comment and approved it anyway.”
“I got an,” Joan begins, but the words are stuck in her throat. “I missed.” She gives up.
“Sorry?”
“He emailed me.”
Joan is proud of herself for delivering a whole sentence at a time like this, but Shropshire frowns.
“What? Who did?”
“The user. I—I tried to . . . delete his comment. But he.” Joan is shaking. “Emailed.”
“And?”
Through the bureaucratic obstacle course of the Contact Us! feature, user Abominable Glow Man managed to find Joan’s work email and inform her, politely, that he was the son of Elsie Jane McLoughlin Blitz, and as such, he found Joan’s censorship inappropriate. As her son, the user claimed, he had a right to contribute a frank appraisal of her life. A quick google search confirmed that the name on the email matched the name of Elsie Blitz’s real son, although Joan understood that this proved nothing. Joan didn’t reply to the message but restored his comment, deciding that he had a point: standard filters ought not apply to family members of the deceased. In any case, hundreds of new comments flooded the Elsie guest book every minute, burying his. Better to leave it buried, concluded Joan. It was her favorite conclusion to reach, and she applied it to numerous quandaries.
“And he was—he said—was her son,” Joan stammers.
Anne Shropshire closes her eyes and flares her nostrils. It is interesting for Joan to see patience expiring in real time. “And because some completely unknown user, likely a troll, claimed to be related to the deceased, you thought their comment was appropriate?”
“I had—got—”
“And let’s assume this stranger was telling the truth. A totally improbable claim, but let’s just assume for a moment. Do we have a provision for sons, Joan? Does the guidebook say that foul language, copyrighted material, and mean-spirited remarks are acceptable so long as they come from the family?”
Joan desperately needs to blink. It’s like her eyes have been pressed against a scanner. She shakes her head no.
“No. It does not. We pride ourselves on protecting all of our online grievers, Joan,” Shropshire says. “We strive to provide refuge for those otherwise drowning in agony. That’s our mission. That’s the whole point of us. But we can only accomplish this if each and every screener is dedicated and alert.”
When Rest in Peace downsized, they eliminated the coffee in the office kitchen. If you want us to be alert, Joan would say if she were an entirely different person, give us back our K-Cups!
“You could be someone’s guardian angel,” Shropshire continues, “or you could ruin someone’s week. Next time you’re scanning your comments and emails from terrorizers, I urge you to picture the grievers on the other side of the screen. Just picture them. The grandkids, the coworkers, the siblings, the parents, the spouses and real sons and real daughters of the deceased. Sitting in their little chairs in their dark little rooms, pillaging the internet for solace. I want you to picture their distress when they stumble upon your mistake. That one comment from that one troll on their beloved’s life summary, published because he claimed to share blood with the departed. I want you to imagine these poor souls as your error twists the knife of grief right in the heart of their guts. Can you picture that? Can you see them? Our grievers?”
To stave off an anxiety attack, Joan is breathing to the beat of “Ave Maria.” She tries to picture the grievers—tries to picture the knife of grief right in the heart of their guts—but sees only an inexplicable beagle in a sweater, glowing before a desktop.
“Every day, you need to ask yourself: Am I going to be a guardian angel today, or a knife-twister?”
Joan blinks. It is the wrong time to do so, but it feels spectacular.
“We value you,” Shropshire repeats. “But that’s not enough. You have to value yourself.”
Anne Shropshire turns to go but stops. “One more thing,” she says. “Defecation emojis are unacceptable. I thought that’d be obvious, but apparently not. Really, Joan. Wake up.”
She leaves. White noise thunders. Sylvie’s crunching resumes.
An Absolutely True Story
Obituary >> Condolences >> Photo Reel >> Guest Book
Obituary:
ELSIE JANE MCLOUGHLIN BLITZ
Tuesday, 16 July
Dearest Loved Ones, Enemies, Voyeurs, and Fans,
One advantage of dying slowly is that you get to write your own obituary. I could have left the task to the kid of a friend with the poetry MFA, or the journalist with the serious hair, but instead I propose a new genre: the auto-obituary. Eighty-six years on Earth, condensed by the one who lived them. In an era of confessional status updates, factory-farmed memoir, and federal tweeting, it seems appropriate to deliver my own farewell address. I, Elsie Jane McLoughlin Blitz, pink-cheeked television sweetheart, activist, and—above all—devoted mother, hereby offer a sweeping assessment of my life as it was lived. I assure you it will have almost nothing to do with me. Part of it is considered a “listicle” by those who ought to know. I am nothing if not a modern woman.
At the risk of sounding terminally Los Angeles, I will begin by suggesting to you that we are interconnected and interdependent, no matter how fiercely narcissism reigns. I hope you will keep that in mind as you consider the pygmy three-toed sloth.
As you should know if you are a sentient creature alive in the Information Age, the pygmy three-toed sloth, Bradypus pygmaeus, is the most endangered of all Xenarthra, its minuscule population restricted to a single mangrove forest on an island off the Caribbean coast of Panama. The sloths have lived on these same 4.3 square kilometers for nearly nine thousand years, and they are thus invaluable specimens of evolution. Island dwarfism has made the pygmy three-toed sloth the smallest of its genus. Because it is a perilously slow creature, the pygmy three-toed sloth depends upon camouflage for its survival and has thus developed a symbiotic relationship with green algae, which grows on the sloth’s fur at no cost to its health. I now write to you from the only home the pygmy three-toed sloth has ever known, Isla Escudo de Veraguas, where I currently sit on an orthopedic mattress, on which I have requested to die. Half of my ashes will be tossed into the sea, where the resplendent sloth often swims, and one-fourth will be scattered at the roots of the red mangrove trees, in which it lives and on which it feeds. Scientists estimate that fewer than eighty of these individuals persist on the island, due to illegal mangrove destruction, climate change, and poaching.
What about the last fourth of my ashes, you ask? The last fourth of my ashes will be sold to the highest bidder on eBay, proceeds benefiting the EDGE campaign to save the pygmy sloths. So bid while the ashes are hot, my darlings.
First, I will share a selection of life lessons, in no particular order. I will then provide a list of valuable items I have lost, followed by a few notes, and then an absolutely true story. Because most of us have so little tolerance for negative space, unreality, and nonutilitarian language, you will find a reward for reading said story. Finally, I will offer my concluding reflections on fame and death.
If you miss me after I perish, you will find my spirit virtually lingering here. I also recommend the somewhat outdated but nevertheless extraordinary documentary Hanging with the Sloth—a collaborative effort between Jeri Ledbetter and Bill Hatcher, two visionaries I admire very much.
A Selection of Life Lessons, in No Particular Order:
1. Supplement therapy with boxing lessons. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.
2. When you’re thirteen years old and actor Charlie Newman offers to teach you chess, accept, even if you already know how to play.
3. When you’re sixteen years old and game show host Henry Hawk offers to teach you something in his hotel room, decline.
4. If you fail to decline, don’t whine about the emotional aftermath, because you knew what you were getting yourself into when you removed your rings.
5. Always get on the sailboat.
6. If someone refuses alcohol, never ask why.
7. Tell no one, excepting your agent, that you can cry on command.
8. Open bathroom doors cautiously. Especially in Manhattan, Paris, Budapest, Berlin, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, Havana, and San Francisco.
9. Beaver fur is underrated.