Art Buchwald, in his final days at a hospice:
I spent two days by his side to find Buchwald doesn't see himself as courageous, nor does he feel shored up by supernatural spiritual strength. To fade away naturally is the decision he made when faced with the alternative of being hooked up to a dialysis machine three times a week, for five hours at a stretch for the rest of his life.
He said, "I had two decisions. Continue dialysis, and that's boring to do three times a week, and I don't know where that's going, or I can just enjoy life and see where it takes me."
Buchwald, for those too young to know, was the Dave Barry of his day. Or maybe he was a combination of Barry and John Stewart. His syndicated humor column was almost always about politics, and he had a way of cutting through the political doubletalk that never seemed mean-spirited. He wasn't as inventively clever as a Dave Barry, and his humor wasn't quite as penetrating as that of a Stewart or a Letterman. But a lot of people, including me, made Buchwald a daily habit; it helped put all the nonsense in perspective.
This column, about his own impending death, is pretty typical of his style:
By the way, people always talk about heaven as the place where we are all going. The problem with thinking about heaven is that you then have to think about hell. The irony of our culture is people are constantly telling other people to go to hell, but no one tells them to go to heaven.
