I’m still in mourning.

The final episode of “30 Rock” hit airwaves last week, and I’m not quite done grieving yet. I tearfully re-watched the third season like a 1950s war widow looks through handwritten love letters. I quoted an episode at lunch and almost cried into my bowl of tater tots. I know I should have been prepared for this — after all, sitcoms have a short life expectancy — but when something dies, it still stings.

It’s like the punched-in-the-gut feeling I got when those rat bastards at Nickelodeon pulled the plug on “Hey Arnold,” or when I realized that, as a 14-year-old, I should probably sell my LEGOs. Saying goodbye to something you love is hard. When that thing is the ingenious “30 Rock,” it needs to be honored like a damn Purple Heart recipient.

So if this is a death, consider this my eulogy.

“30 Rock” was one of the most inventive, unconventional, well-written sitcoms of our generation. Laugh track be damned. To hell with character development and emotional depth. The program was like a live-action game of Mad Libs – characters’ words were twisted, rearranged and thrown into gut-busting puns. Rational thinking and logic could be suspended if it followed the show’s one rule: be funny.

And funny it was. Sure, the series started poorly. NBC really should have paid its first season viewers like researchers pay test subjects. But deep underneath muddled storylines and butter-knife-dull dialogue was a program with promise. By its third season, the sitcom about a crappy comedy show was actually quite a good one itself. It was like “Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip,” minus the Aaron Sorkin gravitas.

When I first tuned in, I was a sophomore in high school. At the time — around season three — the series was taking home as many golden statues as Daniel Day-Lewis when he plays a real person. Critics deemed the material inventive. Fans basically hailed creator Tina Fey as the second coming of Christ. For my friends and I, it quickly became the show that made us seem funnier than we really were.

I personally owe the writers of “30 Rock” a serious debt. I’ve recycled, reused and shamelessly stolen material from the sitcom’s characters like a freaking train robber. There were just so many quotable characters: the executive Jack Donaghy, who said things like “synergy”; the idiotic actor Tracy Jordan, who had the filter of a gleefully profane 13-year-old; and the sweet NBC page Kenneth Parcell, who said things equally wholesome and odd.

But perhaps the most iconic and referenced “30 Rock” character was Fey’s Liz Lemon. Playing the head writer of a half-assed, lazy variety show, Fey delivered week in and week out. She was ballsy. She wasn’t afraid to rap poorly and often. Hell, she carried the series and made it the most quotable sitcom of all time.

Now, as much as it pains me to say it, we have to lay “30 Rock” to rest. We have to bury it in the ground right next to “Seinfeld,” “Friends,” “Hey Arnold” and even my old LEGOs. I don’t know about the rest of the TV-watching world, but I’m going to remember the series for its whip-smart dialogue. I’m going to remember it for its profoundly unprofound wit and charm. Nothing ever mattered in the world of “30 Rock” except pure, unadulterated escapism — and that’s the way it should be.

I hope the series will run in syndication for years to come. I hope DVD box-sets will be released as soon as possible. But for now, all that’s left to do is say goodbye to Fey’s crowning achievement. And since quoting a biblical verse is probably frowned upon — and probably sacrilegious too — I’m just going to leave you with the simple wisdom of Tracy Jordan:

“We have to be cool to everybody. Because the future is like a Japanese game show. You have no idea what’s going on.”

Thanks for being so cool to us, “30 Rock.” Rest in peace.