And this is the way we found you, full of taxes and elephants, bedazzled in sequins and crapped on by pelicans.

And this is how you looked to us as we painted art deco post-modern wallpaper art of your face mimeographed onto the soup label.

And when you left us, you took a little piece of our collective heart, but little did we know you needed little pieces of our livers to survive.

And the bills stacked up and we shed tears on the dotted lines and threw ourselves on the sympathy of the major lending industry, bemoaning too the loss of the minor league local banks that knew your name.

And we found the note by your bedside that spoke of your great pain and grief on one side, a ‘To Do’ list on the other with no mention of suicide at the bottom, so we all scratched our heads.

And there is no will or list of directions or people to invite.

And you will be buried in a cheap coffin for six months, then dug up and thrown into a wood chipper to cut you down to size, then cremated and poured into coffee and served with just desserts.

And some old flame burned through town to sip all of our whiskeys on all of our front porches on all of our free afternoons telling tales about what a bastard you were and now we aren’t inclined to believe anything about you, even your departure from a cruel world that sustains this woman.

And we sold all your objects at auction and earned a pretty penny that we placed on the rail of the Union Pacific, derailing it and killing all the passengers inside, hiding from bloodhounds and dispersing throughout the country in hiding, learning an object lesson in diaspora.

And we donated your social security trust fund back to the good people at the US government, which then had to pay a gift tax to itself.

And all of the other loose ends we could’ve easily dealt with were tied into a knot and tossed to the cat for safekeeping.

And etc.

And please find one enclosure of your wedding day, with all in the photo now dead, cozy and warm.

And please let us speak a few words every year at the dinner table in remembrance of your charming noises and radioactive aura and reductive opinions, and please let us do impressions of your authoritarian stance and backmasked voice.

And you’ve left big shoes to fill, so we’ve sent them to the small-footed poor people of somewhere, and you’ve left big britches to fill and we’ve left that task to the hungry hungry hippos.

And we’ve contacted the best-selling historian writer to tackle the mountain of you, but he isn’t sure if he is to throw fact or fiction out the window.

And tell us the one about the Chinaman and the banana again.

And you will be missed; people who never knew you are asking about what you were like.

And we’re doing fine, thank you for asking.