Front Page · Grief Desk
Family Committee Approves Father's Eulogy, His Watch Still In Dispute
Three siblings spent most of a week softening their father's eulogy in a shared document, and reached full agreement only on his watch.
Three siblings have been writing their father's eulogy for most of a week, in a shared Google Doc. The cursor shows all three of them editing at once.
It was marked Resolved in four minutes.
The first draft said what actually happened, in one plain line. He died on the toilet, radio on, mid-bet on the 2:40 at Kempton. He had been drinking since midday, same as most days. None of it stayed in the document long.
One of them left the first comment: "Maybe soften this bit, their aunt will be there." The line became "passed peacefully, surrounded by the things he loved." Nobody asked which things, exactly.
A reply sat under that same comment, in the same thread. It asked if anyone knew where Dad's watch had got to. The hospital, or the drawer at home, nobody was sure. It was marked Resolved in four minutes. The line about his drinking is still marked Open.
The eulogy was never really finished, not even at the reading. The crematorium gave the family a fixed slot, and the next family's cars were already outside, engines running. The eulogy stopped mid-sentence, on the word "loved."
The booking system makes no exceptions for grief, and has never once missed a slot. The solicitor read the will in the car park outside and billed by the minute, same as every other Tuesday. The invoice looked like the comment thread: one line, a time stamp, and a status.
The watch went to the brother who asked first. Their father's drinking was never put to a vote, and nobody has deleted the thread.
This newspaper keeps its own Corrections column for exactly that kind of thing. The entry for this piece is still marked Open.