The-Man-Who-Folded-Himself-David-Gerrold

I think I will tell this exactly as it happened and try to do it without crying. If I can.
Uncle Jim is dead.
I got the phone call at eleven this morning. It was one of the lawyers from his company, Biggs or
Briggs or something like that. He said, “Daniel Eakins?” I said, “Yes?”
He said, “This is Jonathan Biggs-or-Briggs-or-something-like-that and I have some bad news for you
about your uncle.”
“My—uncle—“ I must have wavered. Everything seemed made of ice.
The man was trying to be gentle. And not doing a
very good job of it. He said, “He was found this morning
by his maid—“
“He’s . . . dead?”
I’m sorry. Yes.
Dead? Uncle Jim?
“How—? I mean—“
“He just didn’t wake up. He was a very old man.”
Old?
No. It couldn’t be. I wouldn’t accept it. Uncle Jim was immortal.
“We thought that you, as next of kin, would like to supervise the funeral arrangements—“ Funeral
arrangements?
“—on the other hand, we realize your distress at a time like this, so we’ve taken the liberty of—“
Dead? Uncle Jim?
The telephone was still making noises. I hung up.
* * *
The funeral was a horror. Some idiot had decided on an open-casket ceremony, “so the deceased’s
family and friends might see him one more time.” Family and friends. Meaning me. And the lawyers.
No one else.
I was surprised at that. And a little disappointed. I’d thought Uncle Jim was well known and popular.
But there was nobody there—apparently I was the only one who cared.
Uncle Jim looked like hell. They had rouged his cheeks in a sickly effort to make him look like he was
only asleep. It didn’t work; it didn’t disguise the fact that he was a shriveled and tired old hulk. I must
have stared in horror. If he had seemed shrunken the last time I had seen him, today he looked
absolutely emaciated. Used up.
No. Uncle Jim wasn’t in that casket. That was just a piece of dead meat. Whatever it was that had made
it Uncle Jim, that was gone—this empty old husk was nothing.
I bawled like a baby anyway.
The lawyers drove me home. I was moving like a zombie.
Everything seemed so damnably the same—it had all happened too fast, I hadn’t had time to realize
what it might mean, and now here was some dark-suited stranger sitting in my living room and trying
to tell me that things were going to be different.