Mr. and Mrs. Scribendi and the Sad Day

Mrs. Scribendi, in carefully pressed black suit and spotless black patent leather pumps, adjusted the black pillbox hat that hid, but not completely, her blonde curls, then bent to straighten her already perfectly straight stocking seams. What wasn’t perfect was her countenance. Mrs. Scribendi was very sad, and it showed. Oh dear, she had another tear to wipe.

Mr. Scribendi, also in severe black, relieved, but not brightened, by the snowy whiteness of his shirt, glanced at Jim’s empty desk before pulling the car keys from his pocket. He held in his other hand an 8 ½ by 11 sign by its string loop.

“Yes, we had better go,” Mrs. Scribendi agreed, in a soft voice, to her husband’s unspoken suggestion. Mrs. Scribendi preceded her husband out the door, and after he had locked up and hung the sign on the doorknob, the couple greeted their good neighbour, Pachanga, on the sidewalk.

“Oh, what shall we do without him.” Mrs. Scribendi was whispering and very near unseemly racked sobs. Pachanga looked down at the sidewalk. Mr. Scribendi did the same. Then, rallying, the three walked to the car and got in. All was quiet during the short drive to the funeral home.

The casket was closed. Jim had no family, but more friends than the Scribendis would have thought. There were, of course, his clickperson acquaintances, those folks who had always insisted upon talking to “Jim at Scribendi,” and a handful of colleagues from his newspaper days. His friends, mutual friends, actually, of Pachanga and Jim, from the design/editorial world were there, most notably Kathy and Mell. Kathy was to sing at the funeral and had brought her guitar. “He wanted Rise Again,” she whispered to Mell, seated close by. “It was in his papers. It’s odd, because he doesn’t have any children.”

“We don’t really know that for sure, though,” offered Mell. “We don’t know much about his life before Scribendi at all.” Kathy nodded, still worried lest the mourners think it was she who had chosen the “peppy dirge.”

Father Boggins took as his homily theme The Irony of Life and Death. And, oh, how appropriate. None could staunch the tears that flowed upon hearing that final sentence: “His life was editing; his death was editing.”

Jim, you see, hadn’t been hit by a bus. He wasn’t the victim of an auto accident. He wasn’t tragically struck down by dread disease. Jim had – oh, this is so hard – Jim had fallen asleep at his desk and onto his red pen late, late Monday evening. That seemingly innocent instrument (it didn’t seem so to authors, of course) had punctured his temple, and he finally, in his dying moments, followed the instructions of so many of his customers. “Bleed red,” they would choose from the order form suggestions. Jim bled red on a particularly hackneyed chapter of a particularly bad novel.

Mr. and Mrs. Scribendi returned home after the funeral lunch and removed the sign from the door. “Death in the Family,” it said. Indeed, it seemed so to the mourning Scribendis. Jim had been like a son. Life would not be the same. And neither would the website. Mr. Scribendi, sleepless in the wee hours of the next morning, removed the “bleed red” instruction choice from the now black-rimmed order form page.

(June 2002)