And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark.

I see from watching "The Talk" that ageless pop singer Barry Manilow and ageless sitcom actress/diet expert Suzanne Somers have some sort of pact concerning their deaths, which is that, whoever dies first, the other is going to be responsible for planning their funeral.

Or "producing" a funeral, as Ms Somers, showbiz to the core, put it.  (When she said that, I had a vision of her in a headset with microphone and a clipboard, darting around the mortuary giving orders: "All right, cue the mourners...Rabbi, you're on..musicians, give me  "Looks Like We Made It", nice and tastefully slow...dirge-like..annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd dim the lights and we're on!"

Of course, I immediately started wondering how my final appearance will go.  And then I started fretting about who should go first...I or Peggy.  Normally, my policy is "ladies first," but not in this case.  I don't think I would be a very good cranky widower.  I would be the Arthur Spooneriest of all Arthur Spooners, the crazy uncle to top all crazy uncles.




I will now leave a space for all my nieces  - in the family and out - to rebut the above.











I'd like to think that there would be a great outpouring of humanity, with weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, but I'll settle for a couple of dozen people rattling change in their pockets (male) or rooting through their purses for a Kleenex (female) while someone reminisces about the time I won a crab feast or how we used to go fishing at the lake, hoping that the fish would leave us alone, or how I used to go into grocery stores and pretend to be French.  I got that idea from Sebastian Cabot.   But after I have crossed that bar and am meeting my Pilot face to face, I hope there is jubilation back here.  There will be laughter aplenty when they read the will, I can promise you that!

Well, anyway, if I go first and Peggy is still here, her life wouldn't change too much, except if she wanted a nice big salad, because I'm the only one who can reach the top cabinets, which is where the big salad bowl and giant wooden salad pitchforks are.  Same with batteries for the remotes; they are up high above the Frigidaire, but I realize, the second call she would make after calling Digger O'Dell would be to CableTown to have them disconnect the TV, except for the Oprah Channel, and The Talk, 2 PM weekdays on CBS.

Which is how I got on this topic in the first place.  Don't worry, I'm not ready just yet.