Michelle answered the phone. It was a coroner's office from another state. They called to inform her that her son's body was found. She hadn't heard from him in over a year. She sighed and said "so how does this work? Can you cremate the body?" Michelle's husband, Hank, lowered the newspaper for a glance across the kitchen table. Michelle continued on the phone: "Uh-huh...uh-huh...we ain't claiming the body so you do what you want." Hank turned a couple of pages and Michelle looked at him without turning her head while she was on the phone. The sound of rustling newspaper was Hank's passive-aggressiveness. Michelle's hair was an emotional weather-vane for Hank, it became rather large on days when she was most sensitive to the slightest of nostril exhales. "What did you say!?"..."I didn't say anything.". Michelle mastered the shrillness and inflection of her voice to affect some of the most entertaining contortions in Hank's face and body. It was a cold war. Hank decided today he was not going to shave.
Michelle put the phone down. "Did you hear? Roger finally did it. He's gone! She began to cry. Not from anguish, but from relief. Hank put the paper down and sighed "no more worries, no more suffering." Michelle spent the afternoon calling everyone with with the news. A life-long cloud had lifted. Everyone seemed lighter. No more dark clouds on the horizon in anticipation of Thanksgiving or Christmas. No more Roger to darken ever room with his sour, sullen silence. Now people didn't have to avoid looking in certain directions at gatherings. They had years before stopped trying to engage him in their conversations. His sisters were overjoyed at the prospect of larger shares of the family trust fund. One of them told a friend "Yeah, we got tired of watching him sitting around feeling sorry for himself all the time so we just ignored him hoping he would stop feeling that way."
The family met with the lawyers and the proper adjustments were made to the trust. The extra money was enough for the sisters to each get new cars. Michelle got a boob job, Hank bought some golf clubs and everyone lived happily ever after. Life goes on.
