Famous Last Words

Birth control advocate Margaret Sanger’s last words were, “A party! Let’s have a party.”

Physicist, author, musician, and professor Richard Feynman’s last words were, “This dying is boring.”

When murderer James W. Rodgers was put in front of a firing squad in Utah and asked if he had a last request, he replied, “Bring me a bullet-proof vest.”

Who knows, really, how much of this is fiction, or legend. We love this idea of “famous last words,” hoping that those who are about to die can impart some special wisdom. Or offer a glimpse into their soul.

But how many of us have heard the last words of those we love? Most people in this country die in hospitals or other health care facilities. Loved ones may or may not be there at “the moment.” Who knows when “the moment” will occur anyway? Many people die tethered machines or heavily sedated, unable to communicate. Very very few die awake, aware, articulate—and know we are about to die.

The year Tom died, he was one of 238 Oregonians who used legally prescribed medications to end their lives. (383 were reported to have received the medications). He was awake, aware, articulate. He was very much himself. Just himself fatally ill. Years ago, when I had no clue this would touch my life, I wrote about Oregon’s pioneering Death with Dignity legislation for the LA Times, I thought only about how powerful it was for the person with the terminal illness to be able to take control at the end. The force of that, the comfort of that. I did not think about what this might mean to those around the dying person.

So let me tell you: It is a privilege and a blessing. It is something beyond powerful. It is something beyond “’til death do us part.” It is, perhaps, the reason I emerged from Tom’s death not only not broken, but stronger. Wounded, yes, but also simultaneously healed. It is the reason my grieving “process” defied all those “5 stages of…” “6 stages of…”

It is the reason I react so viscerally to those who say, “I am sorry you lost your husband.” Because I did not lose him. I know exactly where he is. He is under the Fuji apple tree. He is in a wooden urn that looks like a bird feeder on top of the piano he loved to play. And he is everywhere.

His last words, said to me and the children, gathered around the bed that evening were (typical Tom science-guy): “Remember, energy is neither created nor destroyed. I am energy. I will be here. Use me.”

Actually, those were his next-to-last words. His final words, right before he drank the first liquid that would put him in a coma (the second would stop his heart 48 minutes later): “I am off on a great adventure.”

*This image was taken (or “made” as photographers say) the morning of Tom’s death.