Eric really didn’t have a problem with Donna anymore, and hadn’t had for decades. The two of them had gone through occasional periods over ten years of “can’t live with them, can’t live without them” hassles that included a divorce on her part until their final breakup, which neither of them realized at the time was actually a fbreakup. Not long after that, she’d met and married an older guy, Trent Jameson, who had provided whatever it was she’d been looking for. This time it stuck; Donna had been a little late coming to motherhood but her kids now had nearly-grown children of their own.

In fact, Eric thought it would probably be a good idea if Donna could talk to Eunice. Donna had been through a very similar experience of becoming a widow. After she and Trent retired, they’d moved to Bradenton, Florida, where she’d lost him to cancer a few years before; Jeff, Eunice, and Eric had gone to his home town of Lansing for the funeral. Trent’s illness had been nearly as troublesome as Jeff’s, although it hadn’t lasted nearly as long. Eric thought that there were undoubtedly a few things Eunice and Donna could share that were beyond his own understanding.

He had to look up Donna’s number; it had been a while and it had usually been Eunice who had called and talked to her anyway. Somehow, in spite of everything that had happened over the years, they’d managed to stay fairly close friends, and despite the distance they usually managed a phone conversation or an e-mail every month or two.

The phone rang two or three times before Donna picked it up. “Donna,” Eric said at the sound of her voice, “it’s Eric.”

“Hi, Eric,” she said. “Long time, no see. Is something the matter?”

“I’m afraid so,” he said. “Jeff died last night.”

“Oh,” she said, her apparently cheerful mood instantly deflated. “I’m sorry to hear that. Was it the stroke?”

“Complications of it,” he said, simplifying things. “At least he died quietly in his sleep.”

“How’s Eunice taking it?”

“Pretty well so far, but I don’t think it’s had time to sink in yet.”

“It can take a while,” she said. “When Trent died, I was actually a little relieved that he wouldn’t have to put up with the pain anymore.”

“There have been some thoughts of that nature around here, but she’s been busy and I don’t think the reality has hit her yet,” he told her. “It’s only been a few hours. The funeral is Friday, but the time hasn’t been set yet. I’d imagine in the afternoon.”

“I’d better plan on being there. Are you going to be able to put me up, or will I have to find a motel?”

“I can’t say yet. Things are still changing. If we can’t figure out a way to squeeze you in here, we’ll set you up in a motel somewhere.”

“Either way will be fine. Let me work out what I’m going to do to get there, and I’ll get back with you.”

“I’ll be looking forward to seeing you again,” he said honestly. “I just wish it wasn’t for this reason.”

“You know, Eric, we are getting to the age where the only way we see some of our friends is when one of us dies,” she sighed. “I’ve had to go to too many funerals.”

“I understand perfectly,” he told her. “It’s happening to me, too. One of my old climbing buddies from way back when died a few months ago. I would have liked to have gone to his funeral, but I didn’t think I should leave Eunice here alone with Jeff, so I didn’t go. It probably was the last chance I had to see some of those people I knew pretty well. But I guess that’s the way things go.”

“It is,” she replied. “I was going to go out for coffee with a couple of friends from here, but I suppose I’d better get to work on getting on an airliner. I’ll call back when I get things worked out.”

“Do that. I know Eunice would like to talk to you, and I think you should talk to her.”

“We’ll make the time when I’m up there,” she said. “Jeez, Michigan in February. I thought I’d put that behind me.”

“No such luck, but if I remember the weather report from last night correctly, it’s not supposed to be too bad on Friday, so you can probably avoid packing a fur parka and mukluks.”

“Yes, but I’m used to Florida weather now. That makes a difference. See you in a couple days, Eric.”

“See you, Donna. Take care.”

Eric hung up the phone and went to find Eunice, who was looking for clothes for Jeff. “Did you talk to Donna?” she asked.

“Yes, she’s coming. She’ll call back when she gets the arrangements made.”

“It’ll be good to see her again,” she replied. “You know, the more I think about it, the more I don’t think we want to have to try to host everyone here over the whole period. Why don’t you call the Lamplighter Motel in Wychbold and reserve a few rooms?”

“I can do that. We’ll probably still have a few people staying here, but I don’t think stacking them in here like cordwood is a good idea. It’ll drive us nuts when we should be having a little peace and quiet to make sense of things.”

“That’s a wise idea, Eric. Why don’t you go set it up? But before you go I need your opinion on what clothes we should pick out for Jeff.”

“My opinion counts for nothing,” he replied. “But Jeff was never a suit-and-tie guy. I’ve been to all too many funerals where the deceased was wearing something like that when they’d only rarely wear them in real life. It always seemed like they were uncomfortable knowing they were going to be stuck like that forever.”

“I suppose you’re right,” she sighed. “What would you think of slacks, a pullover shirt, and perhaps that brown Cardigan sweater he liked to wear the last couple years?”

“If he could know, he’d know that you knitted it for him,” Eric said, a tear unexpectedly coming to his eye. “I think he’d like that a lot more than any suit ever made.”

“I think you’re right,” she said. “I guess that’s what I’ll do.”

“All right, I’ll go call the motel. Since we ate kind of late, do you want to do anything for lunch right away? It’s past noon now, and Stiverson is supposed to be here at one.”

“Let’s get that out of the way, and then see. What else do we need to do before he gets here?”

“The obituary, I guess.”

“I have it in a file on the computer,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I can find it. It ought to be pretty close to complete, except for adding the dates. It was done long enough ago that Makayla won’t be listed as a survivor, and maybe not Alexis, but they’ll be easy enough to add.”

“I’ll let you deal with that,” he told her. “I’ll go out and bump up the heat in the guest cottage, and see what has to be done to get it ready for company. If I’m still here when Stiverson shows up, I’ll come back in then.”

Eric went and got his coat. It was chilly and overcast outside and a brisk wind was blowing in off the iced-over lake. It would be cold inside the guest cottage; they’d long since removed all the freezables and just turned off the furnace entirely.

It had been a while since he’d been out there, although he kept the door shoveled out so he could get right in in case he needed to get something. And yes, it was cold; the first thing to do would be to turn the heat on so he could do whatever else needed to be done.

As always, getting the pilot light for the gas furnace lit was a pain in the neck, but Eric had lit a lot of them over the years and knew the tricks. A long-nosed lighter used for lighting charcoal and the like made it a lot easier than having to use matches, like he’d once had to. Soon the pilot was lit, and when he ran up the thermostat the burner came right on.

Eric looked around; the place was pretty neat although there were obvious things that had to be done. The bedding probably should be run through the washer, he thought; it hadn’t been used since he’d moved into the house to take care of Jeff.

Right at the moment he didn’t feel in the mood for dealing with it. He’d been busy since Eunice had woken him hours before, without a break to contemplate things, and now he might be as alone as he was likely to get all day. He knew he wanted to think about Jeff, to memorialize him in his own way, to comprehend what nearly six decades of friendship had meant. He sat down on the bed and looked around the familiar little room once again, and he realized that he was in the best place of all to think about that friendship.

As much home as Eric had had for the last fifty years, this was it. It was never his, and he never thought of it as his – this was always Jeff and Eunice’s guest cottage, even though the time he’d been their guest living here had probably totaled up more than half that time. In a very real sense, Eric had spent much of the last fifty years at least being technically homeless, except for this place and the friendship it represented. He didn’t have any complaints about it; it had mostly been how he’d wanted to live, and it had worked out well all around.

It had never been planned that way; it had just happened. He’d only planned to stay there a few weeks, and now it summed up a great deal of his life, for what it was worth.

Even though he could hear the furnace running, it was still cold enough for Eric to be able to see his breath. There’s no point in getting started right now, he thought. When it warms up, maybe later this afternoon, maybe tomorrow, it’ll be easier to work on the things that need to be done. He knew he ought to go back in the house to see what else he could do for Eunice, but couldn’t quite make himself do it. Instead, he stuck his hands in his pockets against the cold, and let his mind wander back to the first time he’d seen the place. It had been back when he’d gotten out of the Army and hitch hiked into Wychbold unsure of what he was going to do for the winter, or for anything else.

Jeff had offered him a temporary job driving an oil delivery truck, which would go a long way toward filling his empty wallet. Eric had said that was well and good, but that he needed a place to stay, too. And, of course, Jeff had an answer for that, also, one that had served Eric for half a century off and on.

“Guest cottage?” Eric asked. “What’s that?”

“It’s that tiny little gingerbread-looking place out by the road,” Jeff explained. “You might not have seen it; it’s on the other side of the garage from where we came in. We haven’t used it for much of anything since we’ve been here, and there’s some stuff from the former owner inside that needs to get hauled to the dump. But that can be dealt with, maybe this weekend.”

“Sure,” Eunice smiled. “Eric, that would work perfectly. You could be by yourself as much as you wanted to. You could even cook for yourself. We’d have you over for dinner pretty often, though.”

“I know there’s an oil space heater in the cottage, and that ought to be enough as small as the place is,” Jeff added, now trying to sell his friend on the idea. “There’s a two-burner stove, a small refrigerator, and a bathroom with a really tiny shower.”

“Sounds like it might work,” Eric nodded. “But maybe I ought to go take a look at it.”

“Sure,” Jeff said, starting to get up. “I’m pretty sure the lights are working, but I’ll grab a flashlight just in case.”

A couple of minutes later the three of them were out at the little building. It was, as Jeff had said, pretty tiny, less than half of the size of the place where Jeff and Eunice had spent their first year together. It was about the size of a medium-sized motel room. There was a lot of unidentifiable stuff stacked here and there; much of it looked like it might be old magazines. The little cottage had a double bed and a sofa that Jeff said could be made down into another bed. “At least that’s what I’ve been told,” he explained. “I’ve never tried to do anything with it or anything else in here. Cleaning this place out has been on the list since we moved in, but it’s never quite made it to the top of the list.”

“Yeah,” Eric said. “This might do pretty well. What do you want for rent?”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” Jeff replied. “I mean, I never thought about renting it until just now. Tell you what. How about if you pay for the fuel oil, at employee pricing, of course, and give us a few bucks every now and then to cover the electric costs. I can’t imagine there’d be very much.”

“I ought to give you more than that.”

“Probably so, but you’re not going to find a better deal than that around here. You can stay inside with us until we can get this place cleaned out, like maybe this weekend. As small as it is, it shouldn’t take long.”

“All right,” Eric said. “I guess I can’t ask for a much better deal than that. You two are awful good friends to me.”

“That’s what friends are for,” Jeff grinned. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be friends. I owe you a few from way back, Eric, and that includes putting me together with Eunice. This is one way I can repay you. Let’s get back inside where it’s warm.”

Back inside the living room, they freshened their drinks again. “That does look like a cute little cottage,” Eric said. “It looks like it might be a fairly comfortable way to spend the winter.”

“I don’t know that anyone’s ever spent the winter there,” Jeff told him. “It does have that space heater and it looks big enough to do the job. I don’t know if there’s an ounce of insulation in the walls, though. I just never thought to ask. Maybe Wilt knows. I can ask him when I see him.”

“Wilt? Who’s that?”

“Our next-door neighbor. I’ll have to introduce you to him. Heck of a nice guy, he’s been here forever. He’s the one who told me the story about that place.”

“Don’t tell me it’s haunted or something.”

“No, nothing like that,” Jeff grinned, and took a sip of his drink. He’d had more tonight than usual, but tonight was special. “It seems that way back when, maybe back in the thirties, the guy who owned this place had a sister-in-law or something who had a bad habit of dropping in for a few days or a few weeks without warning and bringing her kids with her. I guess she was a real crabby old bat, too, and the kids weren’t much better, so when she came she really upset the household. Everything had to be done her way, and the owner’s kids had to be turned out of their room so she and her kids could have their beds. They got real tired of sleeping on couches and on the floor, and frankly the owners got pretty tired of it too. So he had that little cottage built for guests. I don’t want to say that he tried to make it as uncomfortable as he could, but it’s really not big enough for an adult and three kids.”

“Yeah, it wouldn’t be,” Eric agreed.

“So anyway, Wilt says that the next time the crabby old bat showed up with her kids, she was more or less exiled to the guest cottage with them. Well, she didn’t like that at all, and from what Wilt said there was a hell of a fight. They only stayed a couple days and according to him, she left and never came back. The guy who’d had it built, I forget the name, told Wilt that it was worth every penny he’d spent on it.”

“It happens,” Eunice added. “We get people surprising us from time to time because we’re on the lake, but usually that’s only for an afternoon. It does get to be a pain in the neck at times, but it’s like Wilt says, that’s part of the price you pay for having a lakefront place.”

“I could see how that could be a problem” Eric nodded. “I hope I’m not presenting the same problem to you.”

“This is different,” Jeff said flatly. “You may have showed up here unexpectedly, but we’re inviting you to stay. I guess the place has been used as a guest cottage from time to time ever since. The folks who lived here after that, I guess their daughter used it as a playhouse. Sometimes she’d have a bunch of friends over for summer pajama parties, and Wilt said that on a hot summer night the giggling from half a dozen young teenage girls would drive him about half nuts.”

“I can imagine,” Eric grinned. “Eunice, did you ever do something like that?”

“A couple times,” she smiled. “I was a young teenage girl once, you know, although sometimes it seems hard to believe it. The times I went to things like that I don’t remember getting much sleep.”

“So anyway,” Jeff went on, “George Chambers, the next guy and the guy here before us just used it to dump stuff, which you’ve seen. We haven’t had any use for it until now, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to have it turned into a guest cottage again. We won’t have any spare room in the house when the baby gets here, and it is possible for guests to show up now and then. So this will give us the reason to do something we needed to do anyway.”

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

The sound of the hearse pulling into the driveway pulled Eric out of his reminiscences of the past. There were sure a lot of memories in this little building from over half a century of sometimes living there, but mostly they said just how good Jeff and Eunice had been to him all of those years. Helping Eunice out through Jeff’s final years, trying to make his life a little more comfortable was little enough he could do to repay them for five decades of kindness.

Eric realized he could have spent the rest of the afternoon there, just reviewing the memories, but there were things to do. The furnace was pumping a little heat into the room now; maybe by the time he and Eunice were done with working on the funeral arrangements with Stiverson it would be warm enough to get something useful done. Still a little reluctant to leave this touchstone to his friendship with Jeff and Eunice, he slowly got to his feet and walked the short distance and into the house.

Since the funeral had been pre-arranged much had already been taken care of, including selection of the grave plot in Wychbold’s Oak Grove Cemetery, there were only a handful of details that needed to be gone over. By now, Eunice had heard from enough her kids, grandkids, and friends to know that two in the afternoon Friday was as good a time as any for the services. The minister from the Wychbold First United Methodist Church would do the actual service. Although Jeff and Eunice hadn’t known him very well, they’d seemed to like him. Eric had only met the man on the preacher’s occasional visits to see Jeff, and figured he’d do as well as any other pastor so long as he could keep the religious stuff on the light side. Jeff wouldn’t have appreciated it, anyway.

“There is one thing,” Eunice said. “Eric, I can’t think of anyone better than you to do the eulogy.”

“I suppose,” he replied unenthusiastically. “I guess I can come up with something.”

“I know you’ll think of some wonderful and appropriate things to tell everyone about,” she said. “Think of all the times you’ve kept us enthralled with the stories of your adventures. This is just a different way of telling a story.”

“It’s not the same thing,” Eric replied shyly. “But I’ll do my best.”

“I know you will. It’s for Jeff, after all. I have faith in you, Eric.”

Some other details had been worked out. Though Jeff and Eunice had only been peripherally active in the church, the ladies of the United Methodist Women had offered to cater a memorial dinner to be held at the church fellowship hall following the burial. Stiverson’s would offer a small buffet during the visitation, which would precede the service.

Finally Stiverson said, “That gets us down to the obituary. Eunice, you said you already had something written up?”

“More or less,” she said, picking up a sheet of paper. “Jeff and I put this together before he had his stroke. I pulled it up, and added the dates and a couple of great-grandchildren who hadn’t been born when it was originally written. Jeff and I just used a couple of obituaries from the paper for a model. Eric, I don’t think you’ve seen this, so I’d like your opinion.” She slid the paper across the table to him, and he read it over:

Jeffrey Ronald Harrington, 75, died Tuesday, February 19, 2013 at his home on Blue Lake following a long illness.

He was born on August 3, 1937, to Harold and Alice Harrington of Wychbold. He graduated from Wychbold High School in 1955 and Meriwether College in 1959. On May 9, 1959 he married Eunice Dexter of Amherst. She survives.

He lived in the Wychbold and Blue Lake area all his life. Until recently he was the long-time owner of Harrington Gas and Oil Company of Wychbold. He enjoyed fishing, car shows, reading, and being with his family and friends.

He is survived by his wife; three children, Ann (Robert) Newsome of Evansville, IN; Mark (Lori) Harrington of Panama City, FL; and Elaine (Brian) Ross of Reno, NV; by eight grandchildren, Justin (Lauren) Newsome of Ames, IA; Ashley (Kevin) Miller of Rochester, NY; Megan (Chad) Pingree of Greensboro, NC; Bradley and Shelby Harrington of Panama City, FL; Allison Harrington of Los Angeles, CA; and Dustin and Shanna Ross of Reno, NV; by three great-grandchildren, Cameron and Alexis Newsome and Makayla Pingree; and by his lifelong friend, Eric Snow of Blue Lake.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Harold and Alice Harrington of Wychbold, and by a brother in infancy.

A Celebration of Life will be held at 2:00 P.M. Friday, February 22, 2013 at the Stiverson Funeral Home in Wychbold, with Rev. Robert Pillow officiating. Visitation will be held from noon till time of service. Interment will take place following the service in Oak Grove Cemetery, Wychbold. Memorials are suggested to Hospice of Bolivar County or to the family. Envelopes will be available at the funeral home.

“It doesn’t say enough,” Eric spoke up. “It doesn’t say a thing about what a good friend he’d been, not just to me but to a lot of people. It doesn’t say anything about his good sense of humor, or how good a parent he’d been, or how kind and gentle and quiet he was. It doesn’t say anything about how much he loved you, Eunice. It doesn’t say what kind of a man he really was. All that’s there are bare, cold facts, and nothing about the person behind them.”

“I know,” she sighed. “But that’s what obituaries have become these days, at least from the ones I’ve read in the paper. Those kinds of things, Eric, are why I want you to do the eulogy.”

“I don’t know if I can say enough there, either.”

“It’s hard,” Stiverson said. “But she’s right, that’s what obituaries have become, especially since some newspapers have been charging by the inch to run them. It’s pure highway robbery in my book. A person’s death is news to the community, and shouldn’t be a profit center for a newspaper. At least the weekly in Wychbold still runs them for free.”

“I guess,” Eric sighed. “But still.”

“You’re right, Eric,” she said. “But those things need to be said, and I don’t think I’m the one who should say them. That’s why you should be the one to do it.”

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