Unlike all of our goldfish, I'm not dead yet. But I do have a eulogist who is also a pediatrician named Greg Parkinson. At a party one night, years ago, I asked Greg to commit to honoring me at my funeral, as I was about to take a weekend trip with my sisters, and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to tough it out and turn up on the other end alive.

Greg is the perfect eulogist for me because he is warm-hearted, yet hilarious, which is just the tone I wanted to achieve at the ceremony. Also, I didn't know him very well, which meant that he wouldn't hit an emotional snag and break down in the middle of his tribute, which would make people sad and potentially bollix the timing of a good anecdote.

The only problem is that Greg tends to latch onto stories that he hears about me that are embarrassing.  For instance, after I had gotten my mother-in-law settled onto the Acela Express train and the doors closed just as I was about to disembark and I had to hide from her because I knew it would upset her because she'd know I was going to miss my board meeting and the conductor got special permission to pull over because the first stop was more than two hours away but he made me go tell her because he was afraid that she'd see me getting off the train and when I popped into her view I had to put my hand over her mouth to muffle her screams.

Okay, that's exactly the kind of situation that I pray Greg doesn't get wind of, but soon the inevitable deflating text will appear, "yeah, the train thing's going in."  There was also this text: "you put a beer in margot's lunch box thinking it was a can of seltzer? thanks for rounding out pp 7."

Only here's the problem.  Since the time that Greg and I entered into this special relationship, we've grown close.  The other day he admitted to me that he's going to bawl lustily during his commemorative speech. So think twice before you make this kind of arrangement, because one of you will wind up dead, and the other one really hurting.