HOSTING GHOSTS
BBQ for the Departed
Why the touchy-feely?
Each October I’m forced to throw my Barbeque for the departed.
If I wanted to throw this gathering, maybe the work involved wouldn’t make me want to smash champagne flutes on my head. Instead, it’s a shackle around my hostess-with-the-mostest neck. Trust me, I am the most these deceased could ever hope for — but they also insist upon it.
After I threw this event for the first time long ago, a group of invitees wafted in and surrounded my bed at 3 am a week later. I freaked out and fell out of bed. Who the hell are you?!
We are your dead people. We henceforth command you to throw your party annually because we love it, because it adds to our afterlife, and because if you don’t, we will haunt you in wickedness forever. You will call it Barbeque.
I swallowed my teeth. And like that, I was their new event-planning hostage.
Over time, my entire year has become hijacked by Barbeque. You think you’d love to hear from your dearly departed. Perhaps. Unfortunately, mine aren’t the cat’s meow.
I received this text from Uncle Louis — may he rest in peace — in April.
“Barbeque’s right around the corner. Have you bought the new punch bowl?”
Barbeque poo-poo.
If I’m grocery shopping in February, I’ll see a diaphanous blur across the fresh salmon display and a wispy tap on my shoulder. Yummm. That’s what we want for October. Put it on your list.
Every one of them has butted their way into this event — orders fly like volcanic ash. Does that sound like Hell is erupting? I’m not necessarily saying my beloved dead are in Hell.
It’s just, every day I need a nap.
Now we’re in October and it’s a countdown to the big day, which means I’m running in frantic circles focused on my tail. Last year Aunt Mary asked in front of the entire gathering as loud as her death-quelled voice could bear, “Stephie, it’s been so long, I forgot. Do we pee in your orchid collection, or use this?” She was holding up the kitchen sponge. Bless her.
The costs add up, at which point it becomes a budgetary triage.
What’s more crucial, the freshest salmon or extra potty sponges? Do I hire that actor who pretends he’s John D. Rockefeller with my Great-great-grandma while they slow dance? It makes her whole year. Or should I rent the mass of hot tubs because every year Aunt Bonnie “never had so much fun with floating charades in her life”? Except you’re dead, Aunt Bonnie.
None of this is to mention the wine. These people are ghosts who fancy themselves connoisseurs, which they are not. They can’t smell or taste.
Barbeque has become a place to be seen — by me, by the group, by my neighbors who crouch in the bushes in my yard craning their necks to watch as the decomposed cavort.
Alas, I have no place to air my grievances. I get no appreciation.
Why is it that death teaches entitlement? When we’re alive, we think being dead is the worst possible scenario. However, once dead, you live like a fancy dictator. You have far better taste than you knew existed in life, and you boss the living around in a never-ending snooty coup.
When my amorphous guests begin to arrive, without fail someone will address me with droopy fingers as if their nails cost them a small fortune. Dahling, do escort me to the campfire, will you?
They have no fortune. They have no nails.
Food is always a fuss for these who can’t taste, which is like saying electrons care about yesterday. I spend the year arduously reading 30K-word blog articles on barbeque. By the time October rolls around, I’m thoroughly confused, and it doesn’t matter. My guests will come and rejig any plan I’d made anyway. What you want, lovey, is to fold the shredded pork into the punch bowl. Judiciously.
I’m positive after we die the brain decides good sense was all for naught, so vacation mode is the new wisdom. If that sounds counter-intuitive, you should come to Barbeque. These bony guests are enlightening.
They exhibit a go-for-it mentality, which is great instruction for those of us still enjoying live skin.
It must be too quiet in the realm of the dead, because what do they do? Stand around my patio and scream at the top of their deflated lungs. Nothing more — just scream. And howl. They aren’t wolves though. They’re ex-human beings for whom social mores no longer apply. Not to be confused with s’mores, which they devour.
All around the exterior of my house, the Barbequers rub their rear ends on the siding and coo. The first time I discovered them doing this, I dropped a plate of smoked vole on the ground. My Great Uncle Al told me not to worry. Peanut, this feels like a cello is playing touchy-feely music all over my tushy.
It’s renegade. Since most of them missed the boat on NFTs, they stand around the campfire and throw hundred-dollar bills into the flames. Others cut off their hair and burn it, which prompts still others to throw fingers and toes in. Phalanges don’t count in death. It’s where the cool kids hang out, and it makes me wonder what I would do if I had such an opportunity.
Maybe I’d throw this Barbeque in the flames and laugh my skeletal butt off with the rest of them.
Silly me. That’s not what would happen.
When I attend Barbeque as a guest one day, my great-great-grandchild will be hosting, and I’ll be in the hot tub with a shredded pork martini listening to the cello play, being all bossy pants.
I can’t wait.
I want to throw a special BBQ for BOFace and Amy Sea for all the work they did on this story. I owe you two champagne, dinner, and endless s’mores!
Here are some ongoing parties:
