A funeral for the old me

All Sales are final

I imagine my funeral to be narrated by Eve Babitz shortly after a dreadful marriage confession, because if you’re going to die in L.A., you need to channel some Eve.

Narration: Eve Babitz

It was a Thursday in Los Angeles, which meant the avocados were on sale, and Edward Lopez was dead. Dead as disco, dead as drive-ins, dead as sincerity. The funeral took place in the frozen food aisle of the Whole Foods on Fairfax and Santa Monica, because even the afterlife needs eight-dollar kombucha.

I was the ordained minister, which no one questioned because I wore white, had a lanyard, and smiled like someone who knew all your secrets. The Whole Foods manager gave us twenty minutes and a folding chair. That was enough.

Christian—well, the new one—stood beside me, Edward was embalmed in the grease from the refrigerated baked chickens, surrounded by daisies wilting in their plastic sleeves. He was radiant in the way people are when they've stopped lying to themselves.

Jim Morrison was there, leaning against the Coca-Cola refrigerator like it was The Doors' last gig. Janis Joplin snuck in a flask of peach schnapps and poured some on Edward’s sneakers. Joan Didion floated in like a moth with a migraine, scribbling something on a receipt. And in front of the checkout line stood four men in suits—each a continent of consciousness.

The white man in the suit kept checking his phone. The Black man in the suit adjusted his tie like he was waiting for someone to finally tell the truth. The Native American man in the suit had eyes that had seen The Whole Foods before it ever became a supermarket. And the Latin man in the suit—God, he danced. He danced like mourning had hips, like grief could salsa.

Edward’s body lay stiff in a shopping cart. He had a store brand gift card in his cold hand, his man purse strapped across his chest with the dignity of a man who once mistook transactions for love.

I gave the eulogy. “Edward came here looking for an answer,” I said. “Instead, he found Whole Foods. And that, my darlings, is the story of Los Angeles.”

No one clapped. But someone did say “amen” in the tofu section. I blowing cigarette smoke toward the ceiling tiles. “Los Angeles didn’t kill him. It just let him perform the death himself.”

Christian stepped forward. Not the broken one. The rebuilt version. The one who looked like he’d finally forgiven the mirror for showing him the wrong angles for so long.

Masha walked in late, as only the truly important people do. She knelt beside the cart, touched Edward’s cheek—maybe out of love, maybe out of habit. The new Christian took her hand, held it with both of his, and whispered something only the living can afford to say.

“Thank you,” he said. Not for the marriage, but for being the last witness to who he used to be.

And then the store PA system clicked on, playing something that sounded like a Lana Del Rey B-side played underwater.

We didn’t applaud. We didn’t cry. The lights flickered once, like the city was blinking goodbye. And then someone announced a cleanup in aisle three.

We left him there, in the cold hum of capitalism, between the Haagen-Dazs and the frozen peas. That was his heaven. Or maybe just his receipt.

Outside, the sun hit everything like a gold apology. A new day, a new self. And Christian walked into it, lighter.

Sometimes, the death isn’t the end. It’s the receipt. The proof of purchase for the soul.

And maybe that’s all it ever was—this whole damn story. Not a confession, not a eulogy. Just a book you never finished, about a man who finally stopped writing and decided to go for a walk.