Too Soon to Say Goodbye Page 6

  Ben Bradlee, who was editor of The Washington Post, comes to see me every day. He was my friend in Paris and in Washington. I considered him my equal until Watergate, when he became more famous than Jason Robards. I have only two complaints about Ben: He never told me who “Deep Throat” was, and in forty years he never gave me a raise for writing my column.

  Ben was one of John F. Kennedy’s closest friends. The day Kennedy was killed I was returning from Charleston, West Virginia, after making a speech. As I got out of a taxi at the National Press Building I saw people running in and out of the building.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Kennedy’s been shot.”

  I flew upstairs to the Newsweek Washington bureau where Ben was. He was in shock. We both watched the TV hoping against hope that Kennedy was still alive.

  Finally, Walter Cronkite announced he was dead. Ben and I hugged each other and we cried.

  Joe Califano, another close friend, comes to see me in the hospice. Years ago, when Joe was made Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Jimmy Carter, he invited me to go to China with a delegation of doctors, educators, and press.

  When we arrived in Beijing, Joe was standing at the bottom of the stairs to the plane, introducing everyone in his party to the Chinese Minister of Health.

  When he got to me he said, “This is Mr. Buchwald. He is a humorist.”

  This was translated and Joe asked, “Do you know what a humorist is?”

  The minister nodded his head.

  The next morning when I came down for breakfast I said “Good morning” to the members of the Chinese delegation and they started laughing. For the next nine days, no matter what I said, my hosts laughed.

  On the last night, Califano held a banquet in Beijing. He asked me to speak for the press.

  After seven Gambays (cognacs) I stood up and said,

  I wish to thank all the people who made our trip so wonderful. The People’s Republic knows how to treat the press. In America we would never be invited to sit in a banquet like this. We would be out in the rain waiting for news of any kind.

  I want to thank the people who went through my luggage in my hotel room while we were at dinner to make sure my socks and shirts were in the right place. And the people who listened in on my telephone calls to my wife to make sure I had a clear line.

  But mostly I would like to thank the man who went from city to city with us and had the top of his head removed to prove acupuncture works.

  After one more Gambay I passed out.

  Joe Califano used to drive me to the Redskin games. I don’t know if this will get me in hot water or not, but he was the worst driver I have ever been with. He thought he was in a NASCAR race and never stopped for red lights.

  Name-Dropping in the Hospice

  Former astronaut and senator John Glenn has come to see me three times so far. He isn’t a stranger. Our first connection came when I wrote about him and six other astronauts in my column in 1962. We became more closely acquainted when he was elected to the Senate. He was a Democratic speaker at the Gridiron Club dinner and asked me to help him be funny. I worked on his speech with several other people. I loved him, but we had trouble getting him to tell a joke. As we put him through his paces he kept asking, “When can I be serious?” And we kept saying, “Wait, John, wait.”

  Since I’m name-dropping, the Queen of Swaziland came to the hospice with an entourage of ten beautiful women and ten courtiers. The queen was inspecting hospices for her country. She was gorgeous, dressed in Paris couturier clothes, as were her attendants. Chris Turner, the hospice clinical services manager, asked me in front of the queen, “Art, how do you like this place?” “It’s terrible,” I replied. “They beat you and starve you. It’s just like Abu Ghraib.” Fortunately, the queen had a sense of humor and everybody laughed.

  Another visitor was Donald Rumsfeld. I knew Rumsfeld when he was Jerry Ford’s chief of staff. He was a good guy and we played tennis together with Ethel Kennedy and Secretary of the Treasury Bill Simon. I recall that one of the times we played, a Secret Service agent came out on the court and said to Rumsfeld, “There’s a call for you,” and Rummy replied, “Well, tell the president I’ll call him back.” The Secret Service agent said in a nervous voice, “It isn’t the president, it’s Henry Kissinger.”

  I must admit I haven’t been kind to Rumsfeld lately because we are of different political persuasions. I didn’t discuss Iraq with him during the visit. Instead, I told him if he was going to resign or get fired, I could get him a room here at the hospice.

  One visitor who keeps coming back all the time is Ambassador Joe Wilson. He was the one who went to Niger for the CIA to find out if they were selling uranium to Iraq. Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent.

  Ms. Plame was supposed to be protected from willful disclosure of the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency officer. In his column, Robert Novak identified her and indicated she was the one who sent Wilson to Niger. A special prosecutor was on the case for several years investigating the leak.

  I knew Wilson from Martha’s Vineyard, and on his own he came to the hospice to visit me. He came several times. The joke was that because his wife was writing a book, she wanted him to stay out of the house. I asked him why he didn’t write another book and he said, “This is my year to play golf.”

  We talked about Africa, on which Wilson is very well informed, and we had our own think tank at the hospice.

  The White House was furious with Wilson and it was fun to have an inside look at “Bush’s War.”

  My hospice living room was a place he loved to visit.

  Valerie also visited. It isn’t important, but she is very beautiful and the three of us had a merry old time.

  The French ambassador, Jean-David Levitte, came to visit me several times, and we discussed what was going on in France, including the student riots and how Chirac was handling it. It was more than just a protocol visit. He came more than once and stayed for several hours.

  Ethel Kennedy came every day, and on many occasions she brought family members, including her niece Georgeann Dowdle. She brought all sorts of food and gifts. Eunice Shriver visited and called and so did her daughter Maria, whose husband is governor of California. When Arnold Schwarzenegger called me, the first thing I said was “I want a pardon.” He offered to send his private plane for me if I wanted to come work for his election in California.

  Rabbi Bruce Lustig from the Washington Hebrew Congregation came in the first days of my stay at the hospice. He was one of the people we asked to be on standby for my death. He said we could have our services at his temple, and also people could stay for a reception afterward.

  Word got out to the Hebrew Congregation that I had chosen their synagogue for my memorial and I had visits from the officers, who were very happy that I was going to have my service there. The rabbi stopped by a few times during the first month, but since I didn’t seem to be going according to schedule, he didn’t come back. On his last visit, he said to Joel, “You call me when you’re ready.”

  The Anchormen

  Tom Brokaw came to visit me many times. We are bosom buddies. Tom and I go back to when he first came to Washington to cover the White House. I was very happy to see him, because he was thinking of renting the house I owned across the street. He didn’t do it, but I forgave him. I said, “I’d rather have you as a friend than a tenant.”

  I don’t know if it was guilt for not renting my house, but Tom later put me in his book The Greatest Generation. People thought I was a war hero. In the piece on me he said I wasn’t, but people were so impressed they made me one.

  When Tom came to see me, I told him he could now write about “the Greatest Kidney,” and I would send him pictures. He visited me several times with his wife, Meredith. The hospice staff was very excited. As excited as they were when Mike Wallace came to see me.

  One of the nurses kept asking, “Where’s Bill Clinton?” And I kept
saying, “He’s coming, he’s coming.”

  Tom decided to do an interview with me for the Today show. He came to the hospice to film me. This was very big stuff. For his final question, he asked me what I would miss the most. I said, “Global warming.”

  Tom Brokaw was one of the people I asked to speak at my memorial. At first he told me he would do it for his usual fee of $30,000, plus expenses if he had to go out of town. I told him that if he did it for free, the exposure would get him a lot of paid memorial speeches. He said then perhaps he would do it for nothing. I told him he could call his address “The Greatest Generation Waiting to Die.”

  Another great communicator who came to visit me was Walter Cronkite. It was wonderful to see him because he is the most trusted man in America.

  I never thought of Walter as an anchorman, but as a fellow I could beat at tennis. He had a sailboat on Martha’s Vineyard and he kept inviting me on it. I said the reason I didn’t want to go sailing with him was because the biggest lie in the world that you hear from sailors is “I’ll get you back by five o’clock.”

  Walter came to see me with his friend Joanna Simon. She is Carly Simon’s older sister, and the news she brought to me was that Carly had agreed to sing at my memorial service, but since she heard I wasn’t going to die she would sing to me on the Vineyard. I said, “Tell her I want one song: ‘I’ll Be Seeing You (in all the old familiar places).’”

  Walter and I have a deal, which is that we can’t put all the plaques we have received over the years from organizations like the ACLU, the Kidney Foundation, and Hadassah on our walls because that would be too self-serving.

  But there was nothing wrong with my putting Walter’s plaques on the wall in my library, and he could put my plaques on his wall.

  When Walter came to visit me at the hospice, I said, “I received a wonderful sculpture from the Hospice Foundation, and I’ll trade you.”

  Walter said, “How about an ashtray from the AntiDefamation League?”

  I like Walter, so I said, “It’s a deal.”

  My Hospice Is Your Hospice

  I don’t look like a person who is on his way out. I don’t look that way at all. In fact, the first thing everyone says to me when they walk into the living room is, “You’ve never looked better!”

  Were I stuck in a room out of sight I wouldn’t get that attention or notoriety.

  When people first come into the hospice they are very wary and careful. They don’t quite know how to act or talk. They don’t know if there’s hospice etiquette. Then, once they feel comfortable, they say, “Jesus Christ, there’s no parking.”

  The thing that they say makes them the happiest is that we can still laugh together. There are things to laugh about in the hospice, as there are in every situation. When my lawyer, Bob Barnett, came to visit, I told him, “If you can get me seven million dollars for my book like you got for Hillary Clinton, I’ll start dialysis.”

  There were people who showed up that I couldn’t have cared less about. They decided if they came to see me they were doing a good deed, and they would be able to tell other people that they had seen me.

  There were others that crashed the gate. They brought me gifts, toys, soup, coffee cake, and anything else that would make them feel welcome.

  I couldn’t turn them away.

  One lady, Pam Gregory, brought me computer printouts of every single item that came up about me in a Google search. Some of the gifts were crazy. My doctor gave me a stuffed iguana. My three-year-old grandson brought a brightly colored stuffed grouper fish all the way from the Virgin Islands.

  Other people gave me paintings and sculpture. I was tempted to open an account with eBay.

  Photographs were also a very popular gift, particularly if they were pictures from some time in my past. I pasted many of them on the walls in my hospice room. Several were of lady friends, and each one thought her photo should have the prime location on my wall.

  There were jokes among the hospice help about who was my favorite girlfriend. Because of the situation I had put myself in, the women really couldn’t show jealousy—at least not to me.

  The ladies still kept coming back and their photos kept filling up the walls.

  People couldn’t believe I was having so much fun.

  The word spread that if you want a good time, go to the Washington Hospice.

  11

  Mail Call

  The longer I stay in my hospice, and the more media coverage I get, the more mail I receive. Here are some of the questions people ask:

  QUESTION: Why are you in a hospice?

  ANSWER: To die with dignity, when I’m supposed to die. When I came here I was supposed to say goodbye to the world in two or three weeks. But I’m still here after nine weeks.

  QUESTION: What went wrong?

  ANSWER: Nobody knows—not even the doctors. It’s fun to see a doctor who doesn’t know what’s wrong with you. Or why you’re still around.

  QUESTION: I’ve seen you on television and you seem to be very happy. Aren’t you supposed to be sad?

  ANSWER: I’m happy because I’m still here. I never knew how many perks were involved with dying. I have to be honest; I’ve enjoyed every moment of it.

  QUESTION: What do you do in the hospice?

  ANSWER: I spend my time on the telephone and socializing with my friends who come here every day at every hour. My mantra is “I’ve put death on hold.” They not only visit me, and are very kind, but they also bring me food—cheesecake, shrimp, candy, cookies, and takeout from restaurants. I accept it all, even though I think there’s a lot of guilt involved with people who are worrying that I’m not going to get enough to eat. The more I’ve been interviewed, the more friends show up to visit me. And people in town greet each other now by saying, “Have you been to the hospice yet?”

  QUESTION: Do you have plans yet for your memorial service?

  ANSWER: Yes, I’ve chosen my speakers. I showed the list to a lady friend, and she said, “You have no women speaking for you.” I told her all my girlfriends are going to be pallbearers. When I mentioned it to one lady friend she became excited and asked, “What should I wear?”

  QUESTION: Would you recommend living in a hospice to others?

  ANSWER: Not unless you can be assured you’re going to be on television and in The New York Times. You don’t want to leave this world without anybody knowing you’ve been here.

  I was having such a good time with all this attention, I couldn’t tell people any bad stories about dying. Instead, all of them were upbeat, and people told me they loved talking to someone who wasn’t afraid to discuss death. Many letters said the same thing: People just wouldn’t discuss death because of the unknown and fear associated with it.

  Some people wrote that they believed in a hereafter, and that they would see their loved ones again in heaven. Other people insisted that the day you die it is all over. In both cases, I figured the funeral homes were the winners.

  I’ve always been an upbeat person. It’s the thing that has kept me going all my life. To the many people who wrote me, I mostly answered like this: “Thanks for your letter. I’m writing as fast as I can. Love, Art.”

  Many of the letter writers said they were praying for me. If God was listening to the prayers about me, I thought, how busy could God be?

  I heard from people of all faiths. People were lighting candles for me. One man told me he had planted a tree in my honor in Israel.

  People sent prayer beads and even crucifixes that had been blessed. I received a beautiful watercolor painting of an angel.

  I also received religious tracts. One lady in particular kept sending me cards with prayers on them. The letters proved to me that America is still close to God and that people use Him to help someone in trouble.

  The big fun for me is that I’ve received letters from everyone you could possibly imagine, particularly when people thought I wasn’t going to be around for very much longer. I had an e-mail from their maje
sties King Father Norodom Sihanouk and Queen Mother Monineath of Cambodia hoping for my “speedy recovery.” The message came from Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (a.k.a. North Korea), where the couple was living due to political uncertainty in Cambodia. Unbeknownst to me, the queen has been a fan of mine since the seventies.

  William F. Buckley, Jr., and I have had a correspondence over many years. Most of it has been very serious, such as why does he get a Hertz platinum membership card and I don’t? I have complained many times to the CEO of Hertz. I maintained that I am syndicated in more newspapers than Buckley is, but the Hertz people didn’t care. They made me stand in line.

  When Bill heard that I was going to take a dirt nap he wrote me a very sympathetic letter and mentioned that Hertz might throw in six pallbearers for free. It was one of the most touching offers anyone had ever made me and eliminated one of the major expenses of my funeral. If Brokaw would speak for free and Buckley threw in my pallbearers, it would save my estate a lot of money.

  Garry Trudeau was as unhappy as anybody when I told him I was in a hospice and about to buy the farm. He told me losing a leg was one thing, but losing all of me is not in the cartoon strip. Rather than being too sympathetic to my problems, he told me about his kidney stone. And then, as a friend, I told him about mine.

  I wrote to him,

  A kidney stone is the worst thing to have because you wish you were dead. I produced a lot of them until I had a prostate operation, and I can’t tell you how great it is to be able to take a pee and not have to worry about stones.

  I’ve done a lot of fundraising for the Kidney Foundation. To raise money I told people only if they contributed to the kidney fund would we give them Demerol. I’m sure you know about all those machines that crush stones. I worry about you now more than you should worry about me. Dying is nothing compared to passing a stone.