How I'd Like to Be Remembered:  I was at a memorial service yesterday for someone I'd known for many years. He was an activist for GLBT rights back when it wasn't cool. He was remembered for his activism, for his personal quirks, and above all for his service to not just the GLBT communities but the state as a whole. Those who spoke told of him as a brother, an uncle, an activist, and a friend. There were people there I hadn't seen in many years. It was moving and solemn. It made me think of how I'd like my own memorial service to be.

Top of the list: Not like his.

I want raucous. I want dirty jokes and embarrassing anecdotes. I want food that is definitely Not Good For You, in large quantities. I want people shattering diets and ignoring all the good advice their doctors gave them. I want beer flowing like wine, wine flowing like water, and water flowing only to wash your hands before the next course. And a private keg of Guinness just for my honeybear.

I want music. I want to be sung into heaven, and I want all of it to be show tunes --Broadway good, off-Broadway OK, movies if you must -- but if I hear "Ave Maria" or "Amazing Grace" or anything like that, I will come back to earth and kick the singer's ass off the stage. I want "Comedy Tonight" to start it off (the whole damn thing), and "Walk Him Up the Stairs" to end with. I want Sondheim and Jerry Herman and the Gershwin brothers and Richard Rodgers (with all his lyricists). I want Frank Loesser and Cole Porter and Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern. I want Kander and Ebb, Ahrens and Flaherty, Lopez and Marx, Comden and Green, Jule Styne, Cy Coleman, Leonard Bernstein, Marvin Hamlisch, Adams and Strouse, even Mel Brooks. I want people who sing, singing. I want people who *don't* sing, singing.

I want my life celebrated, not memorialized. I want everyone still living who knew me to be there. I want it in the late spring or the early fall, my favorite times of the year. I want the only tears to be from laughing too much. I want it to be the party they'll talk about for years to come.

I don't think I'm asking too much. And it's not like I'll need it tomorrow. But this is What I Want, and What I Need, and I don't express those things all that much.

So, when the time comes, do this for me. Thanks.