The story centers around Millie, a live-in home health aide/companion, who has been taking care of Glenn, a woman in her late seventies. Glenn is ill and in the final stage of her life. Her only daughter, Sandra, a single mother of her eight year old son, Boyd, has moved back home to help take care of her dying mother. Sandra has a contentious and troublesome relationship with her overbearing mother. When the play opens, Sandra has been on a “talking strike” and has not spoken to her mother for some time.
Unbeknownst to everyone but Millie, Glenn actually died two weeks ago.* Millie’s goal is to hide that fact in hopes of healing the rift between mother and daughter. To buy time to do so, she enlists the help of Ben, a friend to the family, by having him install air conditioners in Glenn’s bedroom. Ben naively helps Millie because his attentions are elsewhere. His focus instead is on wooing Sandra since he is hopelessly, head-over-heels, in love. Meanwhile, Glenn’s physician, Dr. Thomas creates problems for everyone when he repeatedly shows up. Millie goes crazy keeping him away from his patient, and Ben does his best to keep him away from Sandra.
Millie’s plight creates continual confusion and chaos which is heightened by the efforts of Glenn’s longtime neighbor, Dorcus, who visits so regularly, she’s practically a member of the family. Dorcus, a collector and enthusiast of bizarre, but true, news tidbits, has read that a Super Soaker will help Glenn’s condition. Despite Millie’s protests, she decides to covertly use the Super Soaker on Glenn. Soon thereafter, all of Millie’s efforts to keep her secret crumble as first Dorcus, then Ben, learn the truth. But how does Millie begin to tell Sandra that her mother has died, let alone, two weeks ago? And why does Ben end up wearing a shower curtain for pants? And how does Thomas end up in Sandra’s bedroom? And just why does Dorcus think Boyd’s fortune cookies are x-rated? Pronouncing Glenn answers all those questions and more!
Author’s Note:
Although it seems not only unlikely, but impossible, to keep a loved one’s death secret from other family members especially while all living under the same roof, the idea for this play came from real life. According to an article in USA Today, a caregiver kept a mother’s death secret and the body upstairs for 2 1/2 years while the daughter and grandchild lived downstairs. She used air conditioners which allowed the body to slowly mummify. When I read this tiny article of only 5 sentences, I wondered what the hell would make someone do something like this? The article mentioned that the caregiver decided “to keep the body upstairs while life went on downstairs out of loyalty, friendship, and love” for her friend who died and did not want to be buried. This play began when I asked what the story would be if the caregiver did all of this, but for the daughter’s sake instead. Then for the purposes of the stage, and the health of the family, I chose a smaller time frame. Also, I wrote this play after dealing my own mother’s death, so it is with compassion and love that Millie’s actions are driven, albeit on the often bumpy road of comedy. My mother would have liked that.
Furthermore, since the play was inspired by an odd news tidbit, the character of Dorcus took on the habit of collecting such information herself. All of the news stories she shares throughout the play - from unusual to amazingly bizarre - are true.
