Alright, I admit it: I read the obituaries. Not all the time, but often enough. I'm usually trying to see how my life stacks up.

My favorites are the octogenarians with the Roaring Twenties portraits which, if you do the math, are becoming rare. Well, you get what I mean, young photo with old age. And sometimes it seems like Catholics are the ones kicking it more than others. Enough to make me wonder about secret rapture ... in reverse.

And, is it just me, or are obituaries getting longer?

Does the newspaper impose a word-limit?

One particularly wordy obit had daughters and sons coming out of the woodwork to acknowledge in their own words their father's demise. I got to studying the surnames and concluded that there was more than one family involved. I mean, step-children, step-in-laws, accounting for the length.

Sometimes I expect to run across a name I know for my past. Not that I have much of a past in NJ. But, well, I knew a bunch of old ladies at my old church who might be, you know, "expiring". I mean, that church was just old ladies, for the most part. Old to me, at least. At the time, at least.

And where did this practice of reading the obituaries come from? My mother. She would read aloud and comment on people's passing in a simultaneously awed and delighted way. I haven't reached that point yet. Well ...