by Chris Torgersen

Created on: December 23, 2009

 Eulogy for Peter Frakes

Peter Frakes was a complicated man whose life touched the lives of many others, for better or for worse. Some called him a great man, to be idolized and emulated, while others thought of him more as a manifestation of pure evil. Me, I always thought of him as being something like a jar of mayonnaise. He was white and round, and while he was okay in small doses, too much of him was probably not very healthy. Also, he could be bought pretty cheaply and could often be found in supermarkets, especially near the end when he would witlessly wander about.

Yes, Peter would not have wanted someone to go on and on at his funeral about only the good things. No, he valued honesty and sincerity above all things. Well, not above money or good wine, but most things. Or a few things, anyway. Let’s just say that honesty was moderately important to him – unless one was speaking to one of his ex-wives while he was away on a “business trip”, in which case he generally discouraged it. And, well, he didn’t really care much what people thought of him anyway.

If Peter were here today, well, that would be weird, because he’s dead. But if his ghost were to show up here at his funeral, or some undead version of him, assuming he still had decent thought processes and wasn’t some zombie out to consume our brains – well, if he were to show up here, once the commotion died down, he would tell you that his proudest accomplishment in life was outsmarting his competitors to become the number one supplier of chimney sweeping services to the Louis Valley region. It wasn’t winning the hand of any of his wives, or when his son Michael graduated from Ahern Academy. It wasn’t his charity work or the attention he brought to the struggles in Sudan. No, he only cared about those things insofar as they advanced his chimney sweeping business. Chimney sweeping was really the only thing that mattered to him. Really, to tell the truth, it wasn’t even so much the chimney sweeping as the money it generated for him, and the satisfaction he had every time he drove another competitor out of the Valley.

Peter Frakes was a real bastard. In fact, he was that worst sort of bastard: the sort that is proud of his bastardly nature and not at all afraid – even eager – to let others experience it. It was this trait that allowed him to succeed in business, even if it created something of an obstacle to success in his personal life.

I’ll venture a guess that three or four of the people in attendance here today are genuinely sad to see him go, and to those people, I extend my sympathies. If Peter was someone you valued, well, I really do feel sorry for you because you really must not have had much. The rest of you are likely just here to make sure he’s really dead or to tell your friends that you saw a dead body. In the latter case, it’s a pity for you he was cremated.  Some of you probably just wanted some of the food. The food is pretty good.

So let us bid a final farewell to a man who may or may not have meant something to us all, but whose funeral we are all attending anyway. I will join you and give him the send-off I couldn’t give him before his death, as his company was unbearable.

Bye, Dad.

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