'YOUR PRE-PAID AUTOBIOGRAPHY GOES HERE'

Last week, a CNN email alert popped into my inbox. Lady Bird Johnson had died.

I felt sadness, in part because knowing who Lady Bird Johnson was meant I had reached a certain age myself, but also because I had admired Lady Bird. She was the only person I knew who was named after a bug. In the 1960s, she helped rid the world of billboards, especially those mean-spirited ones declaring in 8000-point type, "BEAUTIFY AMERICA. GET A HAIRCUT."

Forty years ago, long hair was virtually a crime. My college gym teacher shoved me against the wall for not showing enough ear. Long hair is coming back, according to reports of pre-teen tonsorial behavior patterns, but this time without political overtones. Long hair, along with promises, war, torture, words, art, and death, have lost all significance.

Maybe the only things that still matter are celebrity fundraisers and celebrity drunk-driving arrests.

"Everyone writing about Lady Bird will use the word 'billboards,'" I thought. "And 'beautification.'"

Sure enough, there they were, billboards and beautification, near the beginning of the full-page New York Times obituary.

This, I thought, could be a new puzzle game for Will Shortz or TV quiz shows. This could be the next Sudoku, the next Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. To reduce a person's entire biography into just two words.

"Watergate, China" could only be referring to Richard Nixon.

"The Chief, UI Professor." Tell me you didn't think of Stephen Kauffman.

"Altamont, No Satisfaction." That would handle both Keith Richard and Mick Jagger efficiently enough.

"Demi, Punked." No one else but Ashton Kutcher.

"Iraq." Obviously, George W. Bush only needs one word, four letters, although you might want to toss in "Apocalypse" as well, just to feel safe.

What would my two words be? This gives me pause. Using just two words would certainly cut down on my own obituary cost, now that the News-Gazette charges five-and-a-half cents per character for "personalized obituaries." I might even get by for less than five bucks. "Gregoire Melville died Friday. Angst, Cucaracha." Random perhaps, Kafkaesque, but strangely appropriate. And it would cost less than a cup of Starbucks.

Nevertheless, I do plan to write my own obituary and to use more than two words. The News-Gazette issues a guide for doing so, called "Honoring Your Loved One in Print." It has helpful writing tips, including sample expressions to include, such as "He always said he could weld anything but a broken heart or the crack of dawn" (not making these up) and "She graciously accepted the fact that her only grandchildren would have four legs, a tail and a bark."

The writer of the guide may have been attempting levity in the Face of Death or perhaps this is a ploy to increase the cost of a person's obituary.

The guide encourages you to write a do-it-yourself obit so you don't put other people in the position of inventing polite lies after you kick. You can make stuff up. You could write the poetry that the paper otherwise never allows in print.

Someone I would describe as a good man once asked me what I would say to sum up my life. I stuttered something inane, like "I tried?"

I meant to convey that I had hoped to create something lasting, or that I had given it my all, or done it my way, or more likely I had no idea what I meant.

What would YOU say? I asked.

"I loved," he said soberly, and he meant it in the best sense.

Unlike many people, I am in favor of the paid obituary. I always read the obituaries. People my age do that. It goes with the AARP territory. Paid obituaries are more entertaining. People do write about their pets. Sometimes they include stories of unlikely hobbies or family relations that make no sense to outsiders.

Best of all, paid obits can include the cause of death. Unpaid obits in the Gazette do not include cause of death, the single thing that most people are interested in. I always want to know. He was only 43. Did his liver fail? Was he doing the crossword puzzle while driving?

For my own posthumous self-description, my father-in-law once said I was the kind of person who should live in a cave. That should be included in my obit. I tried to change my nationality last year and become Mexican. Even though the effort failed -- it's extremely hard to replant yourself in other soil -- the intention should be included, one of those "I tried" components of my life.

At the very least, I would mention Champaign-Urbana. If I didn't, the Gazette editors would manage to slip in a reference. Last Sunday, they added a reference to Champaign-Urbana in George Will's column about Antioch College, a reference I'm fairly certain he did not write himself. Part of the function of the News-Gazette is boosterism, to promote itself and the community every chance available. Such is the nature of your garden variety small city inferiority complex.

If the newspaper did publish poetry, someone probably would add C-U references there as well, as in Robert Frost's famous "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood in West Side Park."

In the Oscar-nominated movie "Venus," Vanessa Redgrave, playing and looking both old and comely, attends a funeral and sagely notes, "When you die, everyone wants to be your friend."

In my case, it will more than likely take at least that long. When that time comes, if you would please remember the words "cucaracha" and "angst," then I will have died happy.

-- Gregoire Melville