The Eulogy I’ll Never Give

August 19, 2026

It all started so slowly that none of us saw it coming and we still, looking back, try to figure out where it all began.

I’ve written about this person before, but things have changed, and for the worse, because I know a lot more than I did then.

The reason why I’m posting this today is immaterial. There’s a good reason for it—I’m mourning something else and that put me in mind of her--and that’s all you need to know.

As to where it all went wrong, the first thing we can identify is uncharacteristic behavior, with the most glaring example being the man she chose to fall in love with. He wasn’t at all her type: heavy smoker, tattooed everywhere, dirty fingernails, greasy, barely literate, drug abuser, and a very heavy drinker. Nothing wrong with tattoos; I’m simply saying that is not something she would have chosen in a partner.

But she fell in love with Eddie, as we’ll call him, and moved him into her home. We all gave the situation a side eye, but if she was happy, so were we, and all she’d ever wanted was to feel loved.

I didn’t know then that she wasn’t capable of letting herself feel loved, or that, despite all her self-help books, she didn’t understand that love had to come from within, not without.

Then she started pulling away from people. Cutting off people she’d been friends with for years for no reason. Becoming very secretive. She and Eddie would come home from work and lock themselves in their bedroom, where they kept a fridge full of booze, leaving Rose, her pre-teen daughter from her first marriage, to fend for herself for meals and the like.

Holidays were strange. I went to see her, my best friend--the one who said she’d always love me no matter what, the one who made me realize words like that are worthless--one Christmas, and she was silent, and surly, and hid behind Eddie most of the time. She barely acknowledged anyone. The silly, funny, happy girl was gone and none of us could figure out why. Eddie wasn’t abusive, so that wasn’t it. But the light in her eyes had dimmed.

Shortly after that holiday, she cut me off with no reason or explanation. I’d known her since the mid-80s and we had so much history together and so many jokes. No one could make me laugh like she could. She always promised me I’d have a home to come to with her, no matter what. But years of friendship ended just like that, and I was never told why.

Being out of the picture and living in another city, I got glimpses of the downward path from time to time from mutual friends, but I had no idea how horrific things had become.

She and Eddie both worked together and had fantastic, high-paying jobs. But they both tested positive for drugs, something she had never done in the past (and none of us had ever seen her do), and got fired. Then it became a folie a deux as they recreated their own Masque of the Red Death in her bedroom with the door shut and the rest of the world on the outside.

Eddie died in their bedroom, from alcohol poisoning, and this was during the COVID lockdown, so she told everyone he died of COVID.

And that was the coup de grace for the person we knew. She started drinking at the rate of 6-8 bottles of wine a day. Money started getting tight, so she started selling things like her purses and shoes and tricking men online into giving her money and people would set up GoFundMes so that she could keep the lights on and food in the house for her daughter, Rose. We all did what we could to help. But all of that money went towards wine. Not bills. Not food. Not the house. Not taxes.

Rose was reduced to scrounging meals wherever she could. Her mother was locked in her back bedroom. A concerned friend finally stopped by after a few months.

The house was unlivable. Rose hadn’t been letting the dogs out in the back yard, so there was urine and feces everywhere. Piles of dirty dishes rotting in the sink, empty fridge, general filth because the house hadn’t been cleaned in months. Child Protective Services came and placed Rose with her father.

My friend’s behavior had gotten much worse in the intervening years. She’d scream at Rose, telling her to go fuck herself, and that she was worthless, and useless, and that she didn’t matter. Four times, Rose found her on the floor blue and not breathing, thanks to pills and a bottle of wine. Four times she went to the hospital, but it didn’t help. She started pitting friends against each other, and using people, lying to and about people, and blaming everyone but herself for her self-induced misery. She could never take responsibility for her actions.

I get it. It’s hard to lose someone you love. But when you have a child, that child must be your first priority, and I don’t understand why so many parents don’t get that. She wanted Rose so badly, and loved her so much until one day the demons took over.

Eventually she got a DWI (driving while intoxicated). She got one and was released on her own recognizance. She did the same thing a few days later, and that landed her a three-month stint in the county jail. She lost her house, her possessions, her car, and her daughter. We all thought that surely this would shock her back to reality, but we didn’t know that she wasn’t capable of such higher thought anymore.

She got out of jail, another DWI, and went to a rehab (run by Scientology). She was there long past her release date, but she did finally come home. There’s a video of her talking at her rehab “graduation” and she’s not the same person. It’s very rehearsed, monotone, and empty. The light in her eyes? Gone.

A month passed, and she was living with her ex-husband and Rose, and things seemed to be looking up for her. She was happy to be with her beloved daughter.

But she started drinking again.

Now? She can’t walk, or take care of herself and the doctors say she has just a few years left to live. She’s delusional, and confused, unable to complete the tasks of daily living. She drifted from one hospital, to be discharged to a homeless shelter, to another hospital, to another homeless shelter and now no one knows where she is, because she’s cut us all out of her life, or we have had to walk away for our own sanity. She had so many bridges, and she burned them all. She was always selfish, and never gave much of herself to anyone, and it turns out, she couldn’t even get better for her own daughter.

Alcohol-related dementia. Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, to be specific.

She posted a picture once. Her hair—which she was very vain about—was long and tangled, dry, sere, full of silver. She was drawn and withered but it’s her eyes that haunt me. They’re blank, and confused. Uncomprehending. Anyone who’s encountered anyone in the later stages of dementia knows that look. All upper cognitive functions have effectively ceased.

She was 54 years old in that picture.

I guess this is the eulogy I’ll never be able to deliver at her funeral. There won’t be anyone to watch her being buried with so many faceless others in a potter’s field somewhere. I’m mourning someone who isn’t dead yet, at least as far as I know, and it’s the most strange feeling, but one that comes along with the alpha and the omega of life. Some of us can cope with life’s vicissitudes, and some cannot. I guess that’s the path she was meant to take, but that doesn’t make it any less a tragedy. It’s a cautionary tale, but the lessons it’s meant to impart escape me.

I miss my friend, but I lost her a long time ago and I can’t even tell you when she was dead to me. I just know that she is now and I suppose this is the final goodbye. I don’t know if it’s good enough. But it’s all I have. As a political satirist, I’m used to using my words as a weapon, not as whatever this is. This meager offering has to be enough and maybe, wherever she is, she will understand.

I’ve told her story, and I have to stop now, because I simply cannot bear to go on. Normally, I aim my sniper rifle at politicians but once in a while, I’m the target. Sometimes life hunts down the sharpest observers and not even I am immune from the firing line.

That’s all I have for you today, kittens.