TUESDAY: Eulogy From Across the Street

FLASH FICTION WEEK 2026
Second-place winner

BY LEE ANN SMITH

Copyright is held by the author.

PEOPLE ARE gathering over there now, old men leaning on their women as they walk to the gravesite. I know all them old couples, of course, from bowling or the company Christmas parties, not many of them left now. I could always find someone needed an escort to the party, even if I didn’t do as well for myself as Jack. He had more coin to flash around, and the ladies like that. Me, I never clogged myself up with higher learning, I got what you could call a degree in what you need to make it through 40 years of General Motors factory dirt and the ringing in your ears from machinery they don’t use any more. All computers and robots now, it’s easy to be sour. Me and Jack got that way sometimes at the Legion, even after we retired, bitching about how things were and how things change and don’t change. Mind you, I’m not much for change, even back then I stuck to the welding line, the kind of job where each guy’s on his own. Not Jack, he worked the marriage line, putting bodies to chassis, which is funny since Jack always had a pretty doll on his arm. Nobody expected Jack to get hitched. But then nobody expected Doreen, either. And once Jack laid eyes on my sister, I guess you could say that’s all she wrote. Me, seems I always been the one left watching the back side of some woman’s swishy skirt as she walks away. But Jack, he had Doreen to egg him on. He complained about it, but he took some courses and got promoted, did well too, but then again, he had more of the glad-hand than I ever did. They bought that house on Geneva Street, planned to fill it with kids, going for the happily ever after. But that’s one thing didn’t work out for them. Meanwhile, I turned up every Sunday dinner and every week they set a place for me and after a while Doreen stopped bringing in “friends” for me to meet and stopped trying to egg me on like she did Jack. Now I’m thinking I maybe should of listened to her. Too late now, she’s gone 10 years, but just think of what I could of had, like a pension like Jack’s, so he could go live out his time in that nice place, real modern, where they move you to a new floor every time you need more taking care of. Me, I’m thinking it be nice to have more than this three-room bachelor on Niagara Street across from the cemetery. Well, everything’s easy when you can pick up the tab. Me, I’ll pick up my hat and I’ll pick up my recollections, make my way across the street and shuffle in with that line of old people. Then I’ll go find anybody at the Legion who wants to toast Jack. And today, I’m buying.

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Lee Ann is a Canadian writer of many genres. An award-winning poet (most recently the 2025 winner of the national Golden Grassroots Chapbook Contest), her poetry has been included in several anthologies. She is the author of two non-fiction history books, and regularly publishes articles for the Historical Novel Society and Master Gardeners of Ottawa-Carleton. https://leeanneckhardtsmith.com