But perhaps no year of his life was as remarkable as the last. It became something of an extended curtain call. Last February, doctors told him he had only a few weeks to live. “I decided to move into a hospice and go quietly into the night,” he wrote three months later. “For reasons that even the doctors can’t explain, my kidneys kept working.”
Refusing dialysis, he continued to write his column, reflecting on his mortality while keeping his humor even as he lost a leg. He spent the summer on Martha’s Vineyard, published a book, “Too Soon to Say Goodbye,” in the fall and attended a memorial for an old friend, the reporter R. W. Apple Jr. of The New York Times. He gave interviews and looked on as his life was celebrated.
19 January 2007
Refuse dialysis, keep writing
Art Buchwald:
