I know a woman in Texas who was helping her very old grandmother move out of her very old house and into an assisted living facility.
Don’t worry. This isn’t a sad story, I promise.
There were boxes of things to sort through, items to pack up and give away, and it seemed like every object sparked a memory or observation from her grandmother. With each piece they removed, the two of them would fall into a long and loopy conversation about the past and its cast of characters, so the whole process took nearly six weeks.
One day, they started talking about what kind of funeral her grandmother might want. What songs did she like? Whom would she ask to say a few words? It wasn’t a depressing topic at all, my friend insists. In fact, it was sort of fun. But after a day or so of planning and ideas, my friend laughed and told her grandmother that it was too bad she wouldn’t be around to see it.
And after a moment or two, her grandmother said, in her classic Texas drawl, Well then, why don’t we just have it now? I’ll sit quietly in the back row and just enjoy. And then when I die, we’ll just get me cremated double quick and call it a day.
And that’s exactly what they did. It was, according to my friend, a smash.
But the problem is that a lot of the other old people in the assisted living place heard about it and want their own pre-funerals. The retirement village is now buzzing with planning and scheduling and dozens of bossy old people trying to executive-produce their own memorial services.
When my friend told me this story, I know I was supposed to say, “How fun for your grandmother! How is she, by the way?”
But I’m a professional writer, so what I said instead was, “That could be a fun small-budget movie or maybe a series. Skews old and sad, but so does all of human life.” I have a bad habit of saying this kind of thing whenever I read or hear something interesting. The first thing I say is, “This story you just told could be a fun movie or TV show,” which is just a nicer way to say, “This story you just told could put some serious money in my pocket.”
Real life, of course, doesn’t neatly wrap up after an hour or so. Real life doesn’t have a satisfying third act, when the major characters have important revelations and the good guys are rewarded. Real life just putters shapelessly along. It takes hard work, unfortunately, to sculpt a true story into a script.
While my friend was still talking about her grandmother — I think that’s what she was doing; I wasn’t listening — I was trying to sort out the basic plot points the story would need, which would include, I’m sorry to say, the grandmother character’s death. I didn’t share this with my friend.
I am not always so thoughtful. A single male acquaintance of mine was at a fancy Manhattan party a few months ago, and he met a young woman from China. After a few minutes of polite chit-chat, she offered him her business card and asked him if he went to a lot of these kinds of parties.
No, he told her. Most of the really good parties are charity affairs, and they cost a lot of money to attend. “Fine,” she said. “Let’s go to some together.” “I’ll pay,” she added.
This was a few months ago. Since then, they’ve gone to a lot of parties together. But he doesn’t really know who she is or where she lives. He only knows that she’s from China and she wants to go to a lot of fancy parties in New York, and she always pays and always takes a lot of selfies.
“Do you think she’s a spy?” he asked when he told me the story. But I was already working on the scripted version and didn’t hear him. “Do you think I’m in any danger?” he asked. “I certainly hope so,” I said. “That would be a terrific second act!”
Which I instantly regretted saying. But not thinking.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
