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Executive Times |
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2007 Book Reviews |
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Too Soon
to Say Goodbye by Art Buchwald |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Graceful Leave it to
Art Buchwald to write a funny book about dying. In Too Soon
to Say Goodbye, Buchwald relates the story of his decision to forego
kidney dialysis and to move into a hospice to await death. Friends came to
say goodbye. Weeks and months passed. His kidneys began to work again. With a
new lease on life, Buchwald decided to write another book. We’re all the
beneficiaries. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning of Chapter 9, “Final
Arrangements,” pp. 48-53: A Good Surrogate The two important pieces of
business you have to attend to before you climb the golden stairs are a
regular will and a living will. The regular will spells out
to whom you want to leave your worldly goods. If there are a lot of worldly
goods, it’s better to have it done with a lawyer. Disinheriting
someone can be almost as much fun as inheriting them. Attitudes toward loved
ones change all the time. It’s the
last power trip you can take. Some
people leave money they don’t have to a church or charity In my case, my wife
pretended she had half a million dollars to leave to the bishop. She didn’t
have it. Since I don’t go to confession, I wasn’t bothered by cutting him
off One of the games people
play has to do with which heirs you want to leave money to and which ones you
want to leave out. The last year of your life is very important when it
comes to writing a will. There are several people I had mentioned in my will,
but when I got mad at them I crossed them out. If you want to be kept in
somebody’s will, be nice and give him a box of candy. The living will has to do
with making all your wishes known before you die. You must tell someone if
you want to be kept on life support (or not), how you want to get buried,
what kind of funeral you want, and how much you want spent on a coffin. One day I read a story in The Washington Post about appointing
a surrogate to make decisions for you if you should become incapacitated by
illness. My
question is, whom can you trust to make such serious
decisions? I’ve always been under the
impression that a surrogate would do exactly what an ill person requests.
But this is not necessarily true. Rick Weiss, who wrote the Post article, pointed out that
according to a survey by the National Institutes of Health, surrogates often
do not fulfill the wishes of the patient. The survey participants, who were
volunteer patients, were asked to imagine that they were incapacitated. Their
designated surrogates, who were given descriptions of the patients’ medical
circumstances, were supposed to make a decision about what the loved one
really wanted. The surrogates got it right only 68 percent of the time. In the study, doctors
didn’t have any better idea about when the patients wanted the plug pulled.
In fact they fared worse—making the correct choice only 63 percent of the
time. And here you are thinking
that if anything happens to you, your surrogate will do exactly what you want. I will give you an example.
The son in this story was the surrogate, and he said he knew precisely what
his father would want if he were to become incapacitated. He wanted the plug
to be pulled. The daughter insisted the father wanted to hang around for a
much longer time. The problem here is that one family member may claim to
know what the patient wants, but another will claim he wants just the
opposite. This opens a whole can of
worms about families, because in times of crisis
everybody has their own opinion as to what their loved one wants. The son
says, “Dad would want to go right now, peacefully” and the daughter says, “He
told me he wanted to hang in there as long as he could,” and then a third
family member says, “Neither one of you knows what Dad wanted because I was
the only one who ever saw him.” You can see the difficulty
we’re in. The kicker is that in the study, it turns out that 70 percent of
patients changed their minds. It’s a very tough thing to
figure out, and all I can say is pick a surrogate (family member, lawyer,
whatever) before you become incapacitated—then make sure that person knows
exactly what you want. I think of myself because
people are naturally selfish. I want a surrogate who is certain to know what
I want when it’s time to say goodbye. I’m not being grim about
this. Besides everything I have mentioned, things could become even dicier when money is involved. Then the question is, are we worried about the wishes of the patient or about
the money involved? These are the decisions
that we all face. For every person who is incapacitated there has to be a
surrogate standing by—and a good surrogate is hard to find. My Plan The important thing about a
hospice is if you can stay long enough you can say goodbye with dignity and
also plan your own funeral. It gives you something to do after you finish
reading Vanity Fair. My plan was quite simple.
Joseph Gawler’s Sons Funeral Home was down the
street from my hospice, so I didn’t have far to go. I chose cremation for no
other reason than it would be easier to transport me to my cemetery plot on
I’ll stay at Gawler’s for one night. Then Joel, my son, will keep my
ashes at his house in As I’m planning my funeral,
I keep adding details all the time. I make sure my obituary
appears in The New York Times. As
I’ve mentioned, no one knows whether you’ve lived or died unless they read it
in the Times. I also make sure no
head of state or Nobel Prize winner dies on the same day. I don’t want them
to use up my space. I insist that my obituary
not say, “He died after a long illness.” I want it to read, “He died at the
age of 98 on a private tennis court, just after he aced Andre Agassi.” My funeral is a small
private affair on Friends on the island will
gather at my grave site and sing “Danny Boy”—my favorite song, though I am
Jewish. After the service everyone
will go back to the Styrons’ for cocktails. I keep
my funeral simple, because, as Walter Cronkite says, ‘Arthur wanted it that
way” A note on my cemetery plot:
Peter Feibleman, a friend and writer, and I were
taking a walk on Martha’s Vineyard along the road to West Chop one summer day
in the mid 1980s when we passed a family cemetery It belonged to the Look
family, and upon closer inspection we found out that the first Look to be
buried there was Thomas Look, in 1743. A man inside the cemetery
was digging a hole with a shovel. Peter asked him, “How’s
business?” The man said, “It’s getting
better. We’re adding twenty-five sites-which the county intends to sell.” “How come?” I asked. “There are no living
members of the Look family left to pay maintenance.” “Can anyone purchase a
plot?” “If you
have five hundred dollars and don’t buy it for a profit.” Peter and I looked at each
other, then rushed back to tell the gang. Bill and Rose Styron said, “We’ll take two.” Mary and Mike Wallace
said, “Put us down for a pair.” John and Barbara Hersey
said they were in. Lucy and Sheldon Hackney (Sheldon was then the president
of the Readers will
smile and sometimes laugh while turning the pages of Too Soon
to Say Goodbye. By the end, the graceful and humorous author will reveal
all the love he’s been given, and what he’s given to others through his wit. Steve Hopkins,
January 25, 2007 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the February
2007 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Too
Soon to Say Goodbye.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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