I looked around the room at the others furiously scribbling their final wishes and chastised myself for being so ill-prepared to consider what an acceptable, if suboptimal, life meant for me. Debbie seemed to be finished already, rushing her errorless quiz to the front. Bethanny waved her hand and whispered to Debbie to go back to her seat, which she sheepishly did. Debbie, Debbie, Debbie. You were certainly the kind of person who needed to be the best, or, at the very least, the first in everything you did. It was admirable. In some ways, we were all striving in these rooms. We weren’t people trying to avoid the inevitable. But what bothered me is that I fixated on Debbie. Somewhere along the way—with my third therapist, perhaps—it occurred to me that the flaws you see in someone else are the flaws you need to work on yourself. But I wasn’t anything like Debbie.

I tried to peek at the directives of the people sitting in my row. To my left was a perky blonde who looked to have settled nicely into her fifties. I remembered her name was Monica. She wanted out at 30 percent—totally bedbound. I stared at the side of her Botoxed face, her expensive highlights. She had the confidence of someone who knew she would be on the receiving end of excellent care. I suspected someone at home truly loved her. Either she feared death and wanted to wait until near the bitter end to go, or she knew something I didn’t. Perhaps she just had a robust relationship with God.

To my right was Ponytail Richard. Richard was balding on top and had the remnants of a long curly mane in a slicked-down ponytail. With a dozen empty seats available, Richard had chosen to sit next to me, not even a seat between us. It was too close. Richard wanted to go at 20 percent. I scanned the chart. Under intake, “minimal sips” was listed; he’d be fully reliant on an IV, and yet Richard still felt life would be worth living. Why?

I felt insane. Fifty percent, maybe even 60 percent, is where I landed. But if I was telling the truth, it was really somewhere more like 70 percent. I had never had a strong will to live.

Did I simply not want to be a burden? Or did I believe no one would want the burden of me?

I leaned over to Richard and touched his paper.

“You missed a column,” I said.

“What?” he asked, startled.

“Uh, you didn’t check off ‘feeding tube,’” I said.

“I don’t want one,” he said.

“But how will you make it to twenty percent without a feeding tube?”

“There are ways,” he said, and looked at me as if I didn’t know anything at all.

“Okay, that’s fine.”