When my father died, nearly sixteen years ago, he thoughtfully left his papers, financial records and all of his personal effects, in perfect order, along with instructions, addresses and phone numbers, which we, his heirs, would need in order to close his estate and wrap up all the loose ends of his life.

  He even wrote his own obituary.  He left it, along with the photo he wished published, on his desk, before making what turned out to be his last trip to the hospital.  

My father had an orderly mind.  He was a mathematician and an engineer:  a brilliant one.  I remember running into one of his old colleagues some months after his death at the United Grocery Outlet.

 He asked me if I was not Andy de la Garza's daughter.  I said yes.  And he remarked, "You know, Andy was one of the great technical geniuses of his generation.  But more than that, Andy was a real gentleman." 

Yes, he was a real gentleman, even in death.

I, unlike Daddy, do not have an orderly mind.  On the contrary, my mind tends to be messy pretty much all the time, and even veers into the chaotic as often as not.

However, I have decided to take a page from Daddy's orderly book and pen my own (sort of) obituary.  Lest you think I'm sick, I'm not....unless you count eccentricity and a small vain glorious streak as mental illness.  

And so, I give you now, a little poem, An Obituary Foretold.