My Eulogy According to My Amazon.com Orders

Dayna was a great woman, a kind woman. Some might say a generous woman. Her generosity showed when she ordered a dozen or whatever blue orchids on Amazon the day before Mother’s Day and forgot to write in the “Do you want to attach a note?” box. Her mother was thrilled by the flowers, but confused by their delivery.

“Who sent these to me?” her mother had wondered. “There’s no note attached.”

Dayna was unreachable by phone that day because the used phone charger she had ordered from iXCC, $3.99 shipping, had not arrived yet. She kept missing the delivery. Her phone was dead so she couldn’t call USPS to complain, though she’d put it on her to-do list. CALL RE: MAIL, the item had said.

Dayna often wrote to-do lists in her notebooks, notebooks she had ordered in bulk from Moleskine only to discover that they were graph paper notebooks and the tiny squares gave her fever dreams of fifth grade algebra class. That year she was asked to sit in a row of desks entirely alone not because she was cheating but because she talked too much and was failing the class. Ten years later, on Amazon.com, Dayna ordered the classic buddy comedy Bio-Dome on DVD.

Who is the failure now? she had written in a diary that year. Pauly Shore is underrated.

It turns out that Dayna actually really enjoyed the theater of Pauly Shore. Three days after ordering Bio-Dome, Dayna also ordered Encino Man and a Led Zeppelin CD. Only a week thereafter, she purchased Son in Law and a book by Western prophet and spiritual teacher Ram Dass called Be Here Now. This was in 2006, a year that Dayna had a very benevolent weed dealer and low ambition. Some say she was the most fun to be around then. Things changed in 2008 when she confirmed a subscription to New York Magazine along with an order of a Malcolm Gladwell book that shall go unnamed, out of respect for the dead.

One thing we all loved about Dayna was her desire to protect the things she so deeply cared about. In every year since opening her Amazon.com account, she purchased a case for an iPhone, a Blackberry, an iPod, and even a small pouch to hold her earbud headphones and a single order of computer wipes at the bargain price of $4.98. In 2009, she ordered a 24-pack of mix-and-match Tupperware. As I said, she protected the things that she cared about.

Dayna was also sartorially sharp, as most people who buy clothes from Amazon.com are. A bi-annual purchase of Hanes men’s V-neck t-shirts became a favorite routine. Dayna said her “life was changed” when she bought an item called a sweater stone that removes ugly sweater pilling. She used it habitually on her one black sweater, the only nice thing she owned. We buried her in that sweater. Once, when she was drunk, she had said, “Bury me in this sweater,” so we did.

Dayna was a nomad at heart, a quality that we saw every year during tax refund season. She was known for her deep loathing of REI and sporting goods stores because they made her feel inferior, which is why an Amazon.com order of two travel towels and a neon orange hiking backpack inspired triumphant feelings in her heart and wallet. The 36 dollars she spent on the backpack “was worth it” even though average customer reviews were below two stars. “THIS BACKPACK IS FLIMSY AND NOT WORTH YOUR MONEY” was not enough to deter her.

“This backpack is pretty good, I dunno,” she had told Gransal, the dreadlocked hostel worker in Berlin when she was tying it together with rough twine. Gransal is here today at Dayna’s funeral. Gransal — anything to add?

“Danya was big time friend!”

Thank you, Gransal. Your words mean a lot to us.

Dayna wasn’t afraid of death because she used a foam roller twice a month that she had ordered on Amazon.com. This made her think of death. She also ordered two boxes of thank you cards that looked like the inside of Zooey Deschanel’s candy-coated heart, and writing in them was like staring into the darkest, most unhinged and detached lobby of her soul.

“Thank you, Aunt Jill and Uncle Nate for the gift certificate to REI,” she had written. “You know how much I love SPORTING GOODS.”

Dayna is dead now but her Amazon.com account lives on. Her password never changed, but that was probably due to some loophole. She spent over $1000 on Amazon.com over 10 years. That doesn’t seem like that much money, in retrospect, but she died with seven dollars in her bank account, so she could have used that money when she was alive. She could, at the very least, have opted for a Prime account and saved on shipping.

Dayna, you always looked good in that sweater. If anyone has proven that sweater stones are worth their five-star user rating, it was you. Rest in peace.

Previously: How To Enjoy a Rainy Day

Dayna Evans is a writer. Find her on Twitter here.