I Am WAS So Popular: Writing My Own Obit

“She was bleeding pretty bad,” Henry, obviously shaken, told authorities. “But she was a stubborn fuck—they don’t call me Son of a Bitch for nothing—and refused to go to ER. I dropped her off at home and by the time I came back to check on her…”

Though her son was too choked up to finish his sentence, the rest of the story seems to involve Gillespie’s pack of dogs, rumored to have grown to 45 in recent years. Princess Bubbles XII—who was the last in a line of Boston Terrier mixes Gillespie had cloned regularly at Texas A&M—apparently led the others in a Healing Licking Ritual that went awry. The front of Gillespie’s skull was licked clean through. Her friends concur that, had she lived, she would’ve been proud that the dogs, all of whom were found wearing ridiculous hand-knitted costumes, had licked so carefully that an impression of Buddha could still be observed if you squinted just right and used your imagination.

Squinting and imagination were two of Gillespie’s favorite survival skills, and she applied them deftly throughout her life to convince herself that everything was going to be okay. For example, back when cars still ran on gas, she could tilt her head just so, narrow her eyes, and pretend the needle indicating her tank was empty was actually not hovering dangerously low, that there was plenty enough to get her to her next destination.

Admittedly, there were times this squint-and-pretend ability got her in trouble, as in 1996 and 2006 when she convinced herself that first one extremely wrong man and then another was suitable husband material. Though it took her five decades to fully accept the notion, eventually—in no small part thanks to the serenely grinning dashboard Buddha—Gillespie was able to make herself (sort of) believe that, as with other disasters in her life, these horrifying unions had “happened for a reason.”

By the time she turned 90, Gillespie had gotten the hang of swapping out most lifelong grudges for relatively shorter 10-year grudges. In fact, this was the topic of her 75th book, Letting Go: How to Get Those Grudges Down to Manageable Ten-Year Blips. That book, like her others, sold roughly 100 copies, yielded no royalties, and netted Gillespie a collective audience of approximately 65 people during her self-imposed-planned-and-executed book tour at dozens of tiny libraries across Texas.

Gillespie readily admitted these tours were mere excuses for road trips, a pastime of which she never grew weary, one dating back to 1999 when she loaded the then 8 year-old Henry into the back of her air-conditionerless Toyota Cressida in late July and dragged his reluctant little ass across the country to promote her very first book, All the Wrong Men and One Perfect Boy, a tribute to her beloved son as well as a scathing expose of a string of idiots she got involved with and her bumpy (to understate the matter) “relationship” with her rage driven father.

Gillespie loved the smell of lavender, the taste of the homemade chipotle sauce she purchased on regular jaunts to Real de Catorce, Mexico, the touch of puppy bellies and expensive yarn, the sound of her son’s guitar playing, and the sight of a positive number in her bank account.

As the self-appointed president of the Office of Good Deeds, founded in the fall of 2006, Gillespie strived to be nice to people at every turn, a task she cheerfully described thusly, “I certainly have my work cut out for me.”

This was a thinly veiled, self-deprecating reference to the keen self-awareness she held that, being from New Jersey and all, the urge to be sarcastic and judgmental informed more than a few moments of her life. She referred to good deed doing as being on par with counterposes in yoga, which she and the dogs practiced daily, until the latter got carried away and licked her to death. “Being mean is so fucking fun sometimes,” she admitted to her closest friends. “But I’m still a little concerned that if I’m not nice, well, maybe there is a hell and maybe I will wind up there just like they told me I would all the time when I was little.”

Gillespie’s early fears of damnation came courtesy of her indoctrination, against her will, into the Catholic Church. Though she left the church as a teenager and spent the rest of her life publicly lambasting that pedophile-riddled institution, the hell-fear never entirely subsided and, in fact, gained tremendous momentum when George W. Bush stole the presidential election in 2000. “I fucking hope there is a hell and that that fucker Bush winds up there sooner rather than later,” she said, moments after Gore conceded.

No sooner had she made this proclamation than she realized that if there is a hell then quite possibly—due to a history of dry humping carnies at the Jersey Shore, sundry acts of unkindness and stupidity spurred by youthful alcoholism, and some of her more scathing observations about rampant assholism on the planet—she’d wind up there herself. It was at this point she set out to be kind, driven more by a fear of spending a fiery eternity in close proximity to W than any real desire to be nice.

Of the many things Gillespie will be remembered for—her refusal to ever purchase a vacuum cleaner, her insistence on “shopping” for furniture curbside on West Campus every spring, and her belief that Ronald Reagan was right on one point: ketchup IS a vegetable (and a delicious one at that, best applied liberally to most dishes)— her obsessive love of Austin, TX tops the list. To be certain, her longest tome—a sixteen-volume set that she was in the process of augmenting and updating even as she was being licked to death—was titled OMG I FUCKING LOVE AUSTIN TEXAS AND HERE ARE SEVERAL THOUSAND REASONS WHY SO LISTEN UP, FUCKERS! Though the collection lists far more entries than can be summarized here, it is commonly accepted that two moments in particular moved her to tears and perfectly illustrated why she did not just believe, but knew as a truth in her heart, that Austin is the best city on the planet.

These events include the time a homeless dude asked her for money and she admitted, in all honestly, that she was broke and, in fact, about to run out of gas (and that no amount of wincing could convince her otherwise), whereupon HE gave her a dollar. Event number two occurred near the golf course in Hyde Park, when Gillespie witnessed a woman in a Mercedes-Benz pull over, get out of her car, and gingerly scoop up the still warm corpse of a recently flattened squirrel, moving him to the side of the road so that he would not suffer further indignity courtesy of additional squashing.

Gillespie was, to her sorrow, preceded in death by 250 rescued dogs, each of whom died of old age, costume overload, or some combo therein. Given her competitive nature, to her joy she also outlived her two ex-husbands, the only two Grudge List Members who were never transferred to the Ten Year Short Grudge List.

She leaves behind her six loyal blog readers, the 45 dogs who were only trying to help, her partner Warren—who is planning a 21-fart salute at her memorial service in honor of the fact that, for their 67th anniversary, Gillespie finally stopped countering his claim that loud, public flatulence is a right, not a privilege—and her beloved son, The Amazing Henry, who was the light and driving force in her life for 83 wonderful years and who noted, “At least she died on her favorite day of the year. I can’t tell you how many times she texted me over the years to say May the Fourth be with you.”

Spike Gillespie is so happy to be alive! She almost got taken out by a city bus about an hour after writing this-- really! You can find details about her next writing workshop workshop and writing coaching over at her blog.