Smell The Fudge

 My buddy Maloney retired a couple of years before I did. We lost touch those two years, but reacquainted our friendship when his father died.

At the funeral, I told him he should take the flower bouquet from the top of his father's casket and throw it into the mostly older audience like a bride at her wedding to see who's next. My wife was quick to remind me that I'm not as funny as I think I am.

Having an aggressive form of Stage Four cancer, his father knew he was not long for this world, so I asked my buddy if his father-who had been a General in the Army and used to handing out grand proclamations-if he had any last words.

Maloney laughed.

"He said, 'If any of you cry at my funeral I'll never speak to you again.'"

I laughed, too.

Who knew his father was a Laurel & Hardy fan?

Yes, he certainly knew how to put the "fun" in funeral.

Looking around, I couldn't help but notice Maloney's monster-in-law wasn't there. You know all those jokes they make at the expense of mother-in-laws? (Listen to Ernie K-Doe's Mother In Law, for example.) In my buddy's case they're all true.

The first time I met her was at Maloney's wedding. I'm not saying my buddy had to get married, but he and his bride spent their honeymoon at the delivery ward of the hospital. Anyway, I knew she was the mother of the bride, so I went up and introduced myself.

"Hello, I'm Jim Duchene..." She greeted me warmly, clutching my hand tightly in hers. "...a friend of Maloney's."

Her smile turned into a grimace and she flipped my hand dismissively to the side. I'm not one to hold grudges, but I never said hello to her after that.

Maloney's monster-in-law…

What a tale that is.

She lives in a nursing home now. She drove-if you could call it that-well into her 90s, but nature has a way of letting you know when it's time to give up the keys, and, by that, I mean she had a pretty bad accident. Considering they had to use the jaws of life to cut her out of the wreckage, she wasn't too banged up. The problem is, and I've learned this from observation, the problem is getting hurt when you're old always seems to start that treacherous journey down the slippery slope of serious ailments.

For some, it's a mental decline, but for most it's a physical decline. I won't go into all the details here, but for my buddy's monster-in-law it was a physical decline, to the point where she could barely shuffle around her tiny one-bedroom apartment by herself. Reluctantly, she used a walker and moved so slowly that if you were looking at her moving toward you she would actually seem to be moving away from you. It didn't help that she had a small dog that was always moving in and out from between her feet.

One night it tripped her on her way to the bathroom. She fell. Hard. She cried for help for hours until her neighbor in the next apartment angrily banged on her door to shut her the hell up and ended up saving her life. He was able to get in because she always forgot to lock the door. One broken hip later, her self-locomotion really declined and Maloney's wife started driving over to take care of her at the expense of their marriage and the welfare of their grandkids. She did her best to take care of her fragile mom, but it was a losing battle from the beginning. There's no substitute for professional care.

Still, his wife was determined to take care of her, so she began going over there several times a day to clean and make sure her mother was eating. Maloney's monster-in-law could barely smoke her cigarettes, much less eat. When your bad habits start to suffer, you know you're in bad shape.

One time her mom was smoking, her cigarette was in her right hand and the ashtray was on her left, so she twisted and leaned over to put it out, lost her balance, and was dangling comedically over the arm of the chair she was sitting in when his wife came back into the room. Maloney's monster-in-law didn't have the strength to right herself.

What finally broke his wife was when she went over one morning to unpleasantly discover her mother had shit the bed. I'm sorry to be so vulgar, but that's what happened. Her mother then got up, walked all over her little apartment with shit plopping out of her Depends all over the place. Here a shit, there a shit, everywhere a shit-shit. I'll give her credit, she took her sheets to the washer for some damage control and then tried to clean up, but the poor lady can't see, so she ended up just smearing everything around.

Maloney's wife asked her what happened.

"What do you mean?" his monster-in-law said.

"There's poop all over the place!"

"It must have been the dog," she replied.

She tried to pretend nothing had happened, but there was no denying it.

Maloney and his wife weren't talking because they had gotten into an argument over her mom, but she called him, crying.

"I can't do this anymore," she sobbed.

She told him the whole story and both decided it would be best to put her mother somewhere she could be cared for 24/7.

"I'll say this about my wife," my buddy said, ending his tale of woe, "she cleaned her mom's apartment so good I didn't smell the fudge the next time I went in there."

Only he didn't use the word "fudge."