Lisa sends me this long text grumbling about her husband and how he’s informed her he can’t handle Taco Tuesdays anymore and now she must redo her ENTIRE menu for January because the selfish bastard can’t deal with spicy food, and I’m thinking, damn. You’re lying in the morgue waiting on someone to perform your autopsy, and the least she can do is wait until we know if you were drunk behind the wheel when you slammed into another car and were thrown through the windshield of your own because you weren’t wearing a seatbelt. She’s railing about her prickly-assed husband while you are dead-dead-dead, along with your brother who is dead-dead-dead, and my husband-your-uncle who is dead-dead-dead, but I am calm. Ice-water-in-the-veins calm. Because who gets to tell my daughter about these grisly events? Who informs Bonnie that her dad shot himself or Cousin Josh’s heart fritzed out in the bathroom or you bought it on the gravel-studded pavement near El Salido Pkwy on the northeast side of Austin, Texas? The pleasure’s mine. I phone her tonight just before Lisa chimes in with her news and I think, damn. Her nag of a husband is alive. What does she have to complain about?
Cindy Sams is a teacher and writer in Macon, GA. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Reinhardt University with an emphasis on Literary Nonfiction. Her work has appeared in Brevity Nonfiction blog, Pangyrus LitMag, High Shelf Press, The Chaffey Review, Canyon Voices Literary Magazine, Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine, and The New Southern Fugitives, which nominated her for a 2020 Pushcart Prize.
Cindy Sams
