Appreciation: Art Buchwald 1925 - 2007

Beloved journalist Art Buchwald, who took humorous jabs at Washington politicians in decades of syndicated columns, has died at his Washington home, it was announced today. He was 81.

When Buchwald's kidneys failed, he entered a hospice facility to gracefully accept his fate without undergoing dialysis. But a funny thing happened on the way to his big exit: He didn't die, and he spent his newfound time reminiscing with friends and family. In Too Soon to Say Goodbye, Buchwald looked back on his life and eyes even his own mortality with the candor and wit that made him such a beloved humorist.

Here is an excerpt from his book, Too Soon to Say Goodbye.

Excerpt
Too Soon to Say Goodbye

By Art Buchwald

Chapter 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 far 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.

Excerpted from Too Soon to Say Goodbye. Copyright © 2006 by Art Buchwald. All rights reserved.