“The last thing I want to touch my earthly lips,” said my friend Joani, literally on her deathbed in April, 1998, “is Dom Perignon.”

Joani got her wish, her husband holding the glass gently to her lips just a few days later.

And that got me to thinking—what’s the last food or drink I’d want to taste before abandoning my physical body for parts unknown?

Over the past 16 years, it’s become a bit of a game with me—a conversation starter or stopper, if you will. Kind of like asking what a person would order on Death Row for their last meal. (Never mind why you were put in prison in the first place, just tell me what you’d want to eat before your execution!)

“I think I’ve finally settled on White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake,” I told a girlfriend not long ago. “So if I never take another bite of White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake, I should live forever, cause if that’s the last thing I’m going to eat, and I don’t eat it—”

“So not eating cheesecake is your immortality insurance?” She laughed. “So what about your t-shirt that says ‘Life’s uncertain. Eat dessert first’?”

“Oh, I’ll eat dessert all right,” I told her. “I’ll just have my second-to-last food choice for dessert—no problem.”

“And what would that would be?” my friend prompted.

“Why, bacon, of course! Lots and lots of bacon! Bacon-wrapped scallops and bacon quiche and bacon savory scones and chocolate-covered bacon!”

“And that will be your dessert?”

I nodded enthusiastically. “I’ll call it the sprinkles on the frosting of the cupcake of a very rewarding life—but I’m not touching that cheesecake any time soon!”