I am wondering what will happen after I die. I don't want to cash in my chips any time soon, but I'm not getting any younger. I figure it’s probably not so unusual for people of a certain age to ponder life’s mysteries.

I don't wonder specifically about the hereafter, although if there is a heaven and if there is still any credit left on my tarnished gold card, I hope it will buy me a one-way ticket. But if reincarnation is what's up for me after this life, then please let me come back as a cellist. It sure would be nice to spread Yo Yo Ma music throughout the world.

I know I have to die before anything beyond the veil takes place so before that day arrives I want to make certain of a few things. For example, those I leave behind already know what a clotheshorse I am and that my love affair with shoes is legend. My people also know that I ain’t going nowhere looking tacky, even dead. Lord, please keep one of my good friends alive long enough to fix me up properly for my extended trip to wherever.

Many people have shared space with me during my brief stay on Planet Earth. Most of them I have loved with all my heart and they have loved me back. The others have basically put up with me and vice-versa. The burning question on my mind today is this: will any of them show up at my farewell party to say a few kind words?

I went to the funeral of an acquaintance not long ago and a bunch of beautiful things were said about her. I was seriously surprised. If I had known she was such a saint, I'd have been a little nicer to her while she was stabbing me in the back.

I hope a few mourners will shed tears after I'm gone, but what if they don’t? What if they sit in the back of the room playing Angry Birds on an iPhone or worse, what if they just sit there Tweeting?

What will people say about the kind of person I was?


Will anybody think to say that I made some hard choices in my life for which I spent years and years trying to forgive myself?

Will they mention that on days when words flowed from my brain through my fingertips and onto my keyboard, I was as One with You as a human is capable of being? Would they think to say that I loved learning but that every time I learned of man’s inhumanity to man, it broke my heart and left me bereft for days?

Please, God, don't let anyone say a bunch o ugly things about me at my last party. I hope no one will be so crass as to recall that I was selfish, pig-headed and impatient. I can think of a few girlfriends who would delight in getting in the last dig. I’m pretty sure I’d be too exhausted from climbing Jacob's ladder wearing my 5-inch high heels to respond with, Back atcha, Bitch!

Mark Twain said, Let us endeavor to live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

Before my time comes, God, will You help me be a kinder person so that the undertaker won’t be the only person who’s sorry that I died?