“ LAST WORDS”

It’s too much to ask to come up with a closing line to equal John Adams’s “Jefferson still survives,” even if that was not quite true on that pre-internet/pre-Twitter 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence when Adams couldn’t have known that Jefferson had died earlier in the day. It would be tacky to plagiarize Walter Lance with, “Buh-duh, buh-duh, buh-duh, That’s All Folks!” and “Yo Jesus, wassup?” doesn’t seem quite right, either. I wonder how many leave this realm calling out “Momma,” an echo of the word with which they began? My Dad’s “Oh, oh, my back, my back” when his abdominal aortic aneurism exploded was certainly no match for the raunchy one-liners from the rest of his life. So I’d like to excel in this area of Last Words, but rehearsing seems unseemly. Would it be better to trust to spontaneity when the time arrives? No, after all this talk, failing to prepare a final speech would be like trying not to think of a pink elephant, so I’ll work at it. Unfortunately, “Hello Darkness, my old friend” has already been taken, though in different context. I’ll probably make do with, “Oh crap, I always knew this was going to happen.”