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Personal Notes — 03
Another awkward conversation you have when you are dying.
Trying to get your doctor to accept it.
Wanting to Die
Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.
Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
The furniture you have placed under the sun.
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
-Anne Sexton
They never ask why because they know.
My wife is dying of emphysema and is in the final stages of that. Her days are filled with pain now and the constant struggle to breath. She tells me that it is wearing her down and that she is so very tired now.
She loves me and would choose to stay if things were different, but they are what they are. She has been trying to get her doctor to admit she is dying so that we can start hospice care.
Three weeks ago, she asked her, flat-out if it was likely she would survive another year. The doctor replied…
