Too Soon to Say Goodbye Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Author’s Note

  1 On Standby for Heaven

  2 The Man Who Would Not Die

  3 How I Wound Up in a Hospice

  4 Life at the Hospice

  5 Caregivers

  6 The Question of Death

  7 Depression

  8 People in My Life

  9 Final Arrangements

  10 The Salon

  11 Mail Call

  12 Poster Boy

  13 Communication

  14 Death in the Afternoon

  15 Awards for Staying Alive

  16 Sex and Lies

  17 In the News

  18 Spoiled Rotten

  19 Five People

  AFTERWORD Too Soon to Say Goodbye

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Art Buchwald

  Copyright

  What started out the worst of times ended up the best of times.

  The big news of 2006 is that I’m still alive. After being in the hospice waiting to die, I said, “To hell with it, I’m going to write a book.”

  This is how it worked. I sat in my hospice chair and I dictated everything to my associate, Cathy Crary, who sat there in the living room with her computer. She not only took down my dictation but she also laughed when she was supposed to and made it possible for me to write. I am grateful to her and always will be.

  July 2006

  1

  On Standby for Heaven

  I am in a hospice and I have this recurring dream. I am at Dulles airport and I have a reservation to go to heaven. I go into the terminal and look at the list of flights. Heaven is at the last gate.

  I don’t know if they have reading material on the plane, so I stop at the magazine stand and pick up Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Playboy. I also buy a package of gum and some M&M’s. Then I head toward security.

  I have bought my ticket, which says, “When you go to heaven, you need only one bag, but do not include a cigarette lighter or sharp scissors.” I stand in line for hours. I didn’t realize how many people were on the same flight.

  I run into several friends, and I am surprised to see them. They hadn’t mentioned they were going too. In my dream several of them are younger than I am, and I know two who were smokers.

  I finally get to the security gate, holding on to my bag for dear life.

  The agent says, “You don’t have to bring your computer with you. They have them up there.”

  I say to the agent, “I want to hold on to my bag because I don’t want you people to lose it.”

  Then they make me take off my jacket, my belt, and my shoes.

  When I ask why, the agent says, “You don’t want to wear shoes in heaven. They scratch up the floor.”

  They send me through another gate because I have a pacemaker. Then they make me stick out my arms and they scan my legs with a wand.

  I finally get to the departure gate. Dulles is crowded. In my dream, there are no seats in the waiting area, so I go to Starbucks to kill time. I am not sure if you get lunch on the plane to heaven. For all I know, they give you a bagel and cream cheese and a soft drink. I am warned by an attendant that I can’t get out of my seat on the flight.

  This is kind of silly, because who would hijack a plane to heaven?

  It’s open seating on the plane. I know heaven is a wonderful place, but on the way there you have to sit three across. As with all flights, there are emergency exits in case the pilot changes his mind. There are also life jackets under each seat. In my dream the flight attendants are very beautiful, and they hand out blankets and pillows.

  I enter the waiting area. The loudspeaker says, “Heaven is at the last gate. There will be intermediate stops in Dallas, Chicago, and Albuquerque. The plane has just arrived.”

  I go up to the desk and ask, “Am I entitled to frequent flyer miles?”

  The agent says, “You won’t need any, because you’re not coming back.”

  Now, this is the part I love. (Remember, this is my dream.) The loudspeaker says, “Because of inclement weather, today’s flight to heaven has been canceled. You can come back tomorrow and we’ll put you on standby.”

  2

  The Man Who Would Not Die

  By all rights this book never should have been written. By all rights, I should be dead.

  And thereby hangs the tale.

  I am writing this book from a hospice. But being in the hospice didn’t work out exactly the way I had expected. By all rights I should have finished my time here in mid-March 2006—at least, that’s when Medicare stopped paying.

  What happened to get me to the hospice was this: I was riding the elevator up to my room at the acute care facility when I saw a sign that said there was also a hospice in the building. At that point, all I knew about hospices was that they cared for terminally ill patients. I arranged a tour of the hospice and everything looked very good to me.

  At that moment, I decided I wanted to come here. I had lost a leg at Georgetown University Hospital. I missed my leg, but when they told me I would also have to take dialysis for the rest of my life, I decided—too much.

  My decision coincided with my appearance on Diane Rehm’s radio talk show, which has over a million listeners. I talked with her from the hospice about my decision not to take dialysis. It is one thing to choose to go into a hospice; it’s another thing to get on the air and tell everybody about it.

  The listener response was very much in my favor. Later, I received more than 150 letters, and most of them said I was doing the right thing. This, of course, made me feel good. I wrote back to them: “As Frank Sinatra would say, ‘I did it my way.’”

  When I entered the hospice I was under the impression it would be a two- or three-week stay. But I was wrong. Every day I sit in a beautiful living room where I can have anything I want; I can even send out to McDonald’s for milkshakes and hamburgers. Most people have to watch their diets. No one can believe that I can eat anything I want.

  I have a constant flow of visitors. Many of them have famous names, and my family is impressed with who shows up. (I suspect I would not be getting the same attention if I were on dialysis.) I hold court in the big living room. We sit here for hours talking about the past, and since it’s my show, we talk about anything that comes to my mind. It’s a wonderful place, and if for some reason somebody forgets to come see me, there’s always television and movies on DVD.

  I keep checking with the nurses and doctors about when I’m supposed to take the big sleep. No one has an answer. One doctor says, “It’s up to you.” And I say, “That’s a typical doctor’s answer.”

  I receive plates and baskets of delicious food: home-cooked meals, treats from the delicatessen, frozen yogurt from Häagen-Dazs.

  Everybody wants to please me. Food seems to be very important, not only to my guests, but also to me. If they bring food, they get even better treatment from me. One day I told a friend I had dreamed the night before of a corned beef sandwich. The next day I got ten.

  When my friend Ira Harris heard that another friend, Herb Siegel, had sent me a cheesecake, he said Herb didn’t know anything about cheesecake because he’s from New York, and he would send me a Chicago cheesecake. To prove his point, Ira sent several giant cheesecakes. (I’m not sure I still like cheesecake.)

  Also, I have received dozens of flower arrangements. People don’t send roses when you are on dialysis.

  I don’t know if this is true or not, but I think some people, not many, are starting to wonder why I’m still around. In fact, a few are sending me get-well cards. They must have been purchased by my friends’ secretaries. These are the hard ones to answer.

  So f
ar things are going my way. I am known in the hospice as “The Man Who Would Not Die.” How long they allow me to stay here is another problem. I don’t know where I’d go now, or if people would still want to see me if I weren’t in a hospice. But in case you’re wondering, I’m having a swell time—the best time of my life.

  Dying isn’t hard. Getting paid by Medicare is.

  3

  How I Wound Up in a Hospice

  To explain how I landed here, I have to go back to September 28, 2005, when I was feeling fine and celebrating my eightieth birthday at the French embassy in Washington, D.C. It was a gala affair attended by four hundred people, and it was a fundraiser for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. I remember saying at the time:

  Becoming eighty is a matter of life or death. I chose life. It is a much better position to be in, and it is easier on your back.

  You don’t become eighty all by yourself. There are many people out there tonight who helped me along the way. First, my sisters, Edith, Doris, and Alice; and then my wife, Ann, who was my inspiration; and my children, whom I love dearly. Finally, there is Dr. Michael Newman, who has taken care of me for twenty-five years and made sure I could be here tonight.

  I haven’t forgotten my friends, those who are celebrating with me tonight, and those who couldn’t be here but will always be in my memory book.

  I also haven’t forgotten the grudges I’ve carried throughout my lifetime. They make me feel warm inside. The ones I have never gotten over are the hurts of my childhood. Then, when I grew up, I held a grudge against Eddie Murphy and Paramount for lifting my idea for Coming to America. And the big one: After fifty years, The New York Times dropped my column from the International Herald Tribune.

  At a certain time in life—actually, right now—the two questions that become uppermost in my mind are “What am I doing here?” and “Where am I going?”

  The first answer is a narcissistic one. I was put on earth to make people laugh. The second one is much harder—I have no idea where I am going and no one else knows. And if they claim they know, they don’t know what the hell they are talking about.

  I did not know at the time how smart I was then, to be talking about where I’m going.

  Declining Dialysis

  I first became acquainted with my kidneys twenty years ago. All my life I had just assumed they would not give me any problems. The kidney does its duty discreetly and without fanfare.

  For thousands of years it has been the most underrated organ in the human body. Sonnets, love songs, and masterpieces of fiction have been devoted to the heart, yet if it were not for the kidneys working day and night to excrete poisons from our systems, the heart would not have a chance.

  Men and women cannot live by bread alone. They must also tinkle. Show me someone who has no trouble tinkling and I will show you a happy and rich person.

  I started paying attention to my kidneys when I attempted to pass a kidney stone some years ago in Evansville, Indiana. It was an experience I still haven’t forgotten. The only way to describe it is to imagine trying to push the Rock of Gibraltar through the Suez Canal.

  When someone is climbing the walls trying to eliminate the stone, he will promise anything to get relief. He would give all his worldly possessions for one shot of Demerol.

  I discovered at that moment that people in Washington do not understand how the kidney functions. For example, when a reporter in Washington says he’s going to “take a leak,” he usually means he’s going to pick up a top-secret document from some high government official.

  Because I had my attack in Evansville, Indiana, the AP wire sent out four paragraphs on the stone. It became famous all over the world, so much so that I received a letter from the United States Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia. These are the folks who study moon rocks.

  When I returned to Washington, the geologists offered to study my kidney stone. They called it Project Buchwald Stone.

  Dr. Michael Rubin scoffed at the size of the Buchwald Stone. He said he had passed stones ten times larger, and he wondered if I was just a professional whiner.

  Dr. Wornick, who studied my stone, was more sympathetic. He proved on the blackboard that size was not the main factor in a kidney stone’s pain. The amount of anguish and screaming was in direct proportion not to the size of the stone, but to the length of the path the stone had traveled.

  This probably destroyed Dr. Rubin’s chance of winning the Nobel Prize.

  Once the report was in on the Buchwald Stone, they suggested constructing a building to house it, so people could come view it. It would be an attraction, like the Dead Sea Scrolls.

  It’s amazing how many ideas you can conjure up as a solution to your problems. The first thought I had, as do most people with kidney problems, was “Where can I get a transplant?” I discovered that people line up—sometimes for years—waiting for a kidney. One of my best friends, Erma Bombeck, waited a long time, but it was a little late by the time she got a new one.

  My doctor said that even if I got in line for a transplant it wouldn’t help me. I’m not a good candidate because of my age, and blood pressure. Plus, the drugs necessary to prevent rejection are risky for someone my age.

  My daughter-in-law Tamara offered to give me one of her kidneys.

  I, of course, refused. There is something strange about walking around with your daughter-in-law’s kidney.

  Dialysis is like being connected to a washing machine so that all the by-products (toxins and other metabolic waste) are removed by a blood filtration machine. This means washing out all the toxins three times a week, for five hours at a time.

  I didn’t think my kidneys would let me down, given our long relationship. But in fact they steadily declined, and my doctors told me again that dialysis would soon be necessary. I got mad at my kidneys because I had treated them very well. And this was the gratitude they gave me? Eventually I agreed to dialysis, but I had a counteroffer: Could it wait until after the summer?

  So that was the plan.

  Then, a few weeks after my wonderful eightieth birthday party, I experienced a sudden onset of terrible pain in my right foot. I called my doctor, Michael Newman, who still makes house calls. He looked at my foot and said that I probably had some blood clots in the arteries of my foot, blocking circulation. He said this was an emergency.

  Dr. Newman drove me to Georgetown University Hospital. There the doctors tried very hard to dissolve the clots and restore circulation, but it was not successful. I would lose my foot and part of my leg! I was not happy to hear this. Dr. Newman said that if I didn’t have the operation, my situation was terminal. If I didn’t have my leg removed, I would die of gangrene—a slow and painful death. That didn’t sound very pleasant.

  As it turned out, the dye used to perform the angiogram added insult to injury: My failing kidneys had now totally failed. My doctors told me I would need to begin dialysis immediately so as to make it possible to proceed with the amputation.

  Talk about a double whammy. I was upset, angry, and depressed about what was happening to me. I was not sure I wanted any part of it.

  Still, I agreed to begin dialysis so that my foot and lower leg could be amputated. After surgery, I agreed to continue dialysis, as I was not getting much support from my loved ones for the dying option, which I personally thought was best. I tried dialysis twelve times and decided I didn’t like it. “That’s it,” I said. “I don’t see a future in this and I don’t want to do it anymore!” I had discovered the idea of the hospice by then, and knew I had an alternative.

  Dr. Newman said, “It’s your choice. You’re the only one who can decide.” I knew the entire family was against the idea of stopping dialysis. Everybody warned me that I was signing my own death certificate. Without dialysis I would last only a couple of weeks. I realized that by throwing in the towel I would hurt a lot of people, particularly my children, Jennifer, Joel, and Connie. There was tremendous pressure to take dialysis, and there were lots of
tears when I broke the news to the family that I was not going to do it.

  Dr. Newman arranged for me to be transferred here to the hospice. It’s a nice place, but it’s not easy to get into. It was like applying to Harvard.

  No one gave me a clear idea about what might happen here, and no one mentioned that my condition might actually improve.

  4

  Life at the Hospice

  On February 7 I was given a room at the Washington Home and Hospice. By this time I figured that with any luck I might be around for three weeks.

  The hospice is on Upton Street in northwest Washington, D.C. It’s a busy street, and as I like to tell my visitors, “Dying is easy; parking is impossible.”

  This hospice has fourteen beds. The average stay here before you go to heaven is a few days to two weeks. If you are going downhill, Medicare pays for it. If your condition stays the same as when you arrived, Medicare will not pick up the tab.

  The purpose of hospice is to let you go with dignity and make death easier on you and your family. The first hospice was founded in England in 1967 by physician Dame Cicely Saunders. Dr. Saunders introduced the program to the United States, and the first hospice was established in Connecticut in 1974. Besides residential hospice, the program also works with people who choose to die in their own homes.

  My hospice in Washington, D.C., has a large sitting area for families, which I now call my salon. I spend each day in my salon, greeting friends, watching television, reading, and taking naps. At night I return to my bedroom. It’s very rare that patients ever come out of their bedrooms to the living area. Most of them are too sick.

  The family area is quite comfortable, with couches, tables, a library, a full kitchen, and a play area with toys for children. The biggest attraction is a large aquarium.

  Families come here to pray, console one another, and wait. A large picture window runs the length of one wall, overlooking a beautiful garden with flowers, trees, and a fountain. People can go out there to find peace and quiet.