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Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' classic study, On Death and Dying, remains the definitive book about dying, but Art Buchwald, writing from a hospice, is a lot funnier. And that makes all the difference.
Too Soon to Say Goodbye is the 80-year-old columnist's breezy account of how, back in February, he moved into a Washington, D.C., hospice, expecting to die within weeks.
His right leg had been amputated. His kidneys, "the most underrated organ," were failing.
But after trying dialysis a dozen times ("like being connected to a washing machine"), he told his doctor, "I don't see a future in this, and I don't want to do it anymore."
Buchwald, Washington's longest reigning court jester, was given three weeks to live. His legions of famous friends -- Tom Brokaw, John Glenn, Ethel Kennedy, Donald Rumsfeld -- came to visit.
He started to do media interviews as "the only person who became famous for dying."
Then, he got better. Or at least his kidneys began to work in a medical miracle.
In July, Buchwald left the hospice to spend the summer in Martha's Vineyard, Mass. Now he's living with his son in Washington, promoting a book that ends with the eulogies written by his friends and children.
The book is a lot like Buchwald's columns: short, conversational essays, heavily seasoned with one-liners.
It's a stretch to call it philosophical, but he notes the big question about death is "not where we going, but what we were doing here in the first place."
He builds on stories from his 1993 memoir, Leaving Home, about a Dickensian childhood spent in foster homes and his midlife bouts with suicidal depression.
On Martha's Vineyard, two of his oldest friends, William Styron, who died last week, and Mike Wallace, traded and competed on stories about their experiences with depression.
"We received plaques and awards and became poster boys for mental illness," he writes. "Now I have become the poster boy for death."
But he's never maudlin. "Dying isn't hard," he writes. "Getting paid by Medicare is."
He also notes that "the beauty of not dying, but expecting to, is that it gives you a chance to say goodbye to everybody."
In his premature eulogy, Ben Bradlee, the former editor of The Washington Post, quips: "We should have known it was coming, another Buchwald book and never mind all this stuff about terminal illness. Artie can squeeze a book out of a busy signal."
As for the moral of the story, Buchwald writes: "Never trust your kidneys."
Too Soon to Say Goodbye
By Art Buchwald
Random House, 189 pp., $17.95
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