Too Soon to Say Goodbye Read online

  While I was sitting in my salon one day, an elderly gentleman came up to me to say he had just brought his wife in, and she was now in one of the rooms. He said they’d been married for sixty-six years. I sympathized with his plight. That afternoon he came back to say his wife had died.

  On another afternoon, a lady brought her father to the hospice and told me in the course of our conversation that she was an assistant director at the zoo in charge of the panda house. By luck, my grandchildren were visiting, and I introduced them. She promised they could come any time to see the pandas.

  Large families frequently come to the hospice. A twenty-five-year-old woman was dying of AIDS. Her mother, the children, and all of her relatives sat in the living room for a vigil.

  Another time, I was watching television and a family had gathered in the far corner of the room. One of the nurses came up and said to me, “Could you please turn the television down, because they just lost their father and they’re praying.”

  The family room is where I hold court and where I said goodbye to people before I realized I wasn’t going anywhere just yet. I also use the couch for therapy sessions with my friends.

  They will start by talking about my problems, but then switch immediately and start telling me about theirs. I only charge $75 an hour, because after all, you don’t want to make money in a hospice.

  Unless they’ve had some experience with it, the hospice is still a mystery to most people. Because hospice deals with death, people tend not to talk about it.

  I maintained everyone has to die—I still do. The hospice gives a person the opportunity to die with dignity. It provides care, help, and as much comfort as possible. The circumstances of people finding out about my being in a hospice made everyone feel empathy toward my situation.

  Because I’ve stayed around a lot longer than I was supposed to, I’ve had a chance to see all my friends, and also to speak with them on the phone. At first everybody came here to say goodbye. But time kept ticking by, and at four months in, my kidneys were still working. It is a mystery to my doctors, and my friends claim it is a miracle.

  I’ve been here so long that I’ve decided the living room is a shrine. I tell people if they come here I will cure them of all their illnesses, the way they do at Lourdes.

  Media Star for Death

  It was after I’d been in the hospice for two weeks that I became a media star by accident, by going on Diane Rehm’s radio show. I figured, what the heck, I had nothing else to do. I went on and talked about hospice, about not taking dialysis, and about what it was like to die. I had a feeling Diane’s listeners would want to know what I had told my children, and I discussed how they were reacting to my decision. The interview produced 150 letters and e-mails, the majority of which were sympathetic.

  Diane made me into a celebrity—the only person who became famous for dying. People decided I was a hero. You accept every compliment you can get when you’re in a hospice.

  After Diane Rehm, television producers and editors thought there was a story here: “Man refuses dialysis, chooses death.” From then on the media heavyweights decided they had a character who was willing to die and talk about it.

  First there was This Week with George Stephanopoulos. And then, hallelujah, Sharon Waxman wrote a long piece about me in the Sunday New York Times. As you know, you have never actually existed unless you have been written about in The New York Times. Usually you have to settle for an obituary, but this was a feature.

  After that, Joe Brown interviewed me for Jim Lehrer’s NewsHour. I appeared on CNN, on Channel 7 with Gordon Peterson, in The Washington Post, and on the front page of USA Today. Then Tom Brokaw asked me to be on the Today show.

  Chris Wallace interviewed me for Fox News Sunday. Chris maintained that becoming a hospice patient was a good career move.

  I enjoyed the interviews because it gave me something to do besides watch Wheel of Fortune.

  5

  Caregivers

  The godmother of the hospice is Chris Turner. She is in charge of twenty-five employees, including all the nurses, nurse’s assistants, social workers, and volunteers. She oversees the care of the three hundred or so people who come into and go from the hospice each year.

  We have had a special relationship because her husband is a major in the Marine Corps. I found out after several weeks that she’s tougher than he is.

  I asked Chris, “What do we know about hospice?”

  She said, “Hospice is the true art of nursing care. It is nurses one on one with patients, giving them care and comfort at the end of life. It is like the priesthood in that there is a calling.”

  When the patient enters the hospice, an entire team sets to work to meet the family’s needs—a doctor, a team of nurses, a case manager, a social worker, a chaplain, a nursing assistant, a bereavement coordinator, and of course, the volunteers.

  The social worker is there to assist with everything having to do with coming into the hospice. In a hospice, the family members are as important as the patient, and most of the support from the social worker goes to the family, who are on an emotional roller coaster. The social worker is an advocate, a mediator, and a bereavement counselor. The social worker must speak the many “languages” of people from different cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds. Put simply, the social worker helps families prepare for death.

  The hospice volunteers play a vital role. Many first learned about the hospice program when a family member or loved one received hospice care. They too are drawn by a desire to comfort those at the end of their lives. Some volunteers see the work as a way of confronting their own mortality.

  In my hospice the volunteers answer the phones and screen the calls, which frees up the nurses to spend more time with patients. They also run errands for families and staff members.

  One of the volunteers told me, “The cream of volunteering is contact with patients, and being able to communicate to them that another person cares about their dying.” He said one of the most gratifying moments he had experienced was when a patient said, just before dying, “Thank you for caring.”

  Another volunteer told me that dying people seem to fall into two categories. One group was at peace and said, “I want to go home,” which meant heaven. The other group she saw were people who said, “I have to get up and do something,” or “I have to go somewhere.” They had unfinished business.

  Chris is in charge of which patients are accepted into the hospice. It is harder than getting into MIT. You have to have a certificate from a doctor that you have less than six months to live.

  I asked her, “Can children come to the hospice to visit their loved one?”

  She said, “Yes, it helps them and the patients very much. When they come here we work with all the members of the family who are affected by the death. Sometimes the adults don’t want children to be aware that their loved one is no longer going to be with them.

  “What I love to see after someone dies is twenty people showing up. They order pizza and celebrate the person’s life.”

  I said to Chris, “You hire all the people, the nurses, the aides, etcetera. What do you look for?”

  She said, “These are people who should be able to deal with death and have a feeling they are making an important contribution to the last chapter of a person’s life.”

  Dr. Matt Kestenbaum, the medical director, told me, “People don’t understand the medical role in hospice. We’re not here to pull the plug. We let nature take its course and we give patients all the things they need to be comfortable. If there is one phrase to describe what we do, it is, trying to avoid as much pain as possible. This applies not only in the residential hospice, but also to the care we provide in a patient’s home.”

  The staff members of my hospice come from countries all around the world. My doctor, Cecilia Chukwu, is from Nigeria, as is one of the nurses. There are two nurses from Korea, one from Ghana, one from Barbados, and one from the Ivory Coast. There are also several
American nurses. They all do everything for me, including attaching and detaching my new leg.

  Nurse Jackie Lindsey is my “Chief Ball Breaker.” She gives me a bath every morning, and dresses me so she won’t be ashamed of me when I’m sitting in the salon. Imagine, if you will, that you are a man who can’t bathe himself. The person who does it wants you to be clean.

  I told her once, “That’s no fun.”

  Her reply was, “Someone has to do it.”

  Then I asked her if she gets attached to her patients.

  She said, “Some I do, particularly if I become their confidant and they tell me things they would not tell anyone else. I’ve found it’s harder for the family of the patient to accept what’s happening. In most cases—not all—the dying person has accepted his fate.”

  I asked Jackie if when she goes home at night she thinks about the people she takes care of.

  She said, “Sometimes I do. The ones that affect me the most are young people from twenty to forty. I have to come to terms with it. Of course I feel sad.”

  I asked Jackie how she could do this type of work for so long.

  She said, “I have taken care of three thousand people over thirty-seven years—some for several days, some for weeks, and, as in your case, some for months. I consider dying a very important part of life. I feel good in the sense that since these people are in pain, and most of them don’t have very long to live, I can make their journey easier.”

  “When you’re taking care of people who are dying, does it help to have a belief in God?”

  She said, “Yes, I believe that God is there and wants me to help.”

  Jackie is the mother I never had. She gives me hope, love, and encouragement. She listens to all my stories and I listen to all of hers.

  Finally I asked her, “Don’t you feel bad when you hit my family jewels?”

  “No,” she replied, “because when I do it, I always say I’m sorry.”

  6

  The Question of Death

  I am constantly asked the questions “What is death?” and “Have you seen it?”

  Many of us have seen someone die—or have even had a near-death experience ourselves. Because of my situation, people consider me an expert.

  I had been lying in the hospice for two months with nothing better to do when I decided to start my column up again. People saw the column reappear in The Washing ton Post and began asking questions. “If he’s about to die, what’s he writing a column for?”

  This led to many discussions on the subject of death—where people were going after they die, who makes the decision to die, and how much time we have left before the fatal moment.

  If I’d had a heart attack, I might not have had time to say goodbye to anybody or even take care of my personal affairs. A heart attack is unpredictable.

  On the other hand, cancer can be a long-term illness—ranging from a month to a year. People waste away, and there’s a lot of sadness in seeing somebody you love suffer this way.

  In my case, I had failing kidneys, so my death was supposed to be not too fast, and not too slow, but just right.

  The nurses in the hospice had told my family that death was imminent. They obviously didn’t say it around me, but they discussed it with my family and among themselves.

  As time went on, I became the star patient at the hospice, because I didn’t go according to their plan. Against the odds, my kidneys started working again and could function without dialysis. The employees showed me off to prospective patients and their families. I became the hospice poster boy, and being the ham I am, I enjoyed it.

  Hospices have never gotten much attention, because people connect them with death. People are afraid of the mystery of death. Relatives and friends are initially afraid to visit. It’s a totally new ballgame.

  Of course people want to talk about death, if you give them permission. I always give people permission to discuss it. I discovered it made them very happy to be able to share fears and questions about dying.

  To quote Hamlet, “To be or not to be—that is a very good question.”

  The Afterlife

  People often ask me if there is an afterlife. I answer them by saying, “If I knew, I would tell you.”

  This does not mean that everyone knows more than I do on the subject, including priests (Christian or Hindu), rabbis, or imams. I haven’t yet made up my mind which one of these groups has the answer, but the nice thing about a hospice is we can talk about death openly. Most people are afraid that if they even mention it, they will bring bad karma on themselves.

  I spoke to a Catholic who questioned the idea that I am not certain where I will go after life. This person couldn’t believe that I didn’t know, and said, “Aren’t you going to meet in the hereafter all those people you used to know in life?” I’m still not so sure.

  People talk about heaven as the place where we are all going to wind up. The problem with thinking about heaven is that you also have to think about hell. The irony of our culture is that people are constantly telling other people to go to hell, but no one tells them to go to heaven.

  A friend of mine, Larry Gelbart, said he thinks the end will come for most people when all the phone companies merge and there is only one company left.

  One joker said he thought the only person who knows for a fact that there is a hereafter is Pat Robertson of The 700 Club. When he was asked how Robertson would know, his answer was, “He’s got the largest TV audience, and he wouldn’t be allowed to say it if it wasn’t true.” Maybe the only people who will go to Robertson’s heaven are those who contribute to his church.

  I’m not denying it’s possible that heaven truly exists. If it makes someone happy to believe in heaven, that’s wonderful.

  Some of my guests at the hospice maintain they have actually talked to people who have died. Every person has a different story. Some say they nearly died. Others have been in the room when a person passed away. None of my visitors talked about ghosts, though.

  I don’t doubt what they say. What’s beautiful about death is you can say anything you want to, as long as you don’t lord it over others, pretending to know something they don’t.

  The thing that is very important, and why I’m writing this book, is that whether they like it or not, everyone is going to go. The big question we still have to ask is not where we’re going, but what we were doing here in the first place.

  Thinking About Heaven

  People like to ask me deep questions. One day my friend Morgan asked, “Is there a class system in heaven?”

  I said, “You mean rich people and poor people?”

  He said, “That’s right.”

  I replied, “It’s very possible, because rich people have built all the churches, synagogues, and mosques. Poor people don’t have enough money even to fill in a stained glass window.”

  Morgan said, “I thought as much. Rich people probably have the best hotel rooms, and the most exclusive golfing clubs.”

  I said, “It could be. Poor people can always caddy for the rich people.”

  Morgan asked, “Is there a dress code in heaven? Will the rich people still wear Dior, Gucci, and Chanel?”

  I said, “Yes, because your status in heaven will be based on how beautiful you look and how much Botox you can afford. But, now, Morgan, this is just conjecture. There is a possibility that everyone in heaven will be wearing the same clothes from JCPenney and Macy’s. This might tick the rich people off. I am certain they have it in their minds that their way of life will continue in heaven. I’m just guessing this, but if they can’t be rich in heaven, they might not want to go there.”

  Morgan asked, “What about automobiles? Will the rich have Mercedeses and Lexuses and the poor drive around in used Chevrolets?”

  “Yes, that’s the way it will be, provided they have highways there. And there is no speed limit.”

  Morgan asked, “And private airplanes?”

  “The affluent demand them as their right.
”

  Morgan asked, “When you get to heaven and you’re poor, can you work your way up to being rich?”

  I said, “Yes, that’s known as the Heavenly Dream. I heard of one man who arrived as a pizza delivery guy. In just a year he had Pizza Huts all over the sky. I guess everybody wants to know if it’s even possible to be rich or poor in heaven. If you thought there was a chance you might be poor in heaven, you might not make a big effort to get there.”

  Morgan said, “I read in one paper that real estate is getting very expensive in heaven. A few years ago a golden castle in the sky went for ten million. Now you can’t even touch it for twenty-five. What about taxes?”

  I replied, “As far as I know, there are no taxes. That’s why it’s called heaven.”

  “That means there are no H&R Block stores up there.”

  “Nope. There isn’t even an IRS.”

  “That’s the best thing I’ve heard about heaven so far.”

  I said, “Paying taxes is hell. Morgan, I would be a fraud if I said I knew exactly what went on in heaven. I’d like to be a rich man when I go there. You can afford to go to the opera and get better tables in the restaurants. And the beauty of it all is there is no tipping. If everybody were the same, heaven would be a socialist state, and you wouldn’t want to belong to that, would you?”

  Meet the Devil

  Long before I knew about death, I had already learned about the devil.

  When I was about three years old I had rickets, so my father sent my sister Doris and me to stay in a private home in Flushing, New York, with mother-and-daughter nurses. They were a pair of Seventh Day Adventists, so they had more than a nodding acquaintance with the devil.

  The nurses warned that if we ate fish or meat, or even eggs, then the devil would pounce on us. If we went to the movies, listened to pop music, or enjoyed other forms of entertainment, the devil would take us straight to hell.