The news spread quietly, like the fading glow of a stage light after the final bow. Carol Burnett, the legendary queen of comedy, sat in her dressing room at the old CBS studio where The Carol Burnett Show had filmed decades before. The mirror, framed with glowing bulbs, reflected a face still bright with wit but now softened by time. She ran her fingers over the well-worn script in her lap—her last one. The doctors had been kind but firm. The curtain was closing, not by choice, but by the cruel timing of an illness that even her laughter couldn’t defeat.
