Anyone who had ever laid eyes on my mother or scanned a few bullet points of her résumé (if she ever had a résumé, which certainly she did not) would find it absurdly farfetched to believe she could be capable of gestating such a heretical desire, much less summon up the energy and nerve to actually carry it to term. We’re talking here about an ultra–Orthodox Jewish woman closing in on the finish line of her eighth decade in a lifespan traditionally calculated at three score and ten, hanging on past the statute of limitations, living on borrowed time—the wife of a rabbi, a rebbetzin, mother of nine, grandmother to many. How many? Don’t ask. That’s a question she would have never answered. Jews do not count their own; God does not take kindly to that, it can be fatal. On top of that, she was stricken with stage four breast cancer, an Ashkenazi Jewish specialty like gefilte fish; it had occupied all her territory, though you might never have guessed it by eyeballing her. As a proper religious matron, she had always worn a wig, well before she lost all her hair from the chemo, and she still weighed in at close to 250 pounds. “Finally, a diet that would do the trick,” Ma said, recalling an inappropriate thought that had shot through her brain when she had gotten her diagnosis—a secondary benefit of illness. “But nothing doing.” And she waved a hand in resignation down over the mass of her stubborn flesh.

The other deviant thought that had flashed with the news of her death sentence, Ma admitted to me later, was that now, finally, she had been given permission to make her exit, following, of course, the ritual sadistic formalities for the sake of family, of pretending to fight for her life, pulling out all the stops, pushing to the limit of cutting-edge medical technology no matter how agonizing or pitiful or futile or costly, no matter how much everyone in her orbit secretly wanted to close her file. A longtime fan of obituaries, Ma’s first thought as she pored over those case-closed mug shots every morning was invariably, It’s over, Lucky you, No one will bother you anymore, Don’t worry, you’re not missing a thing. Still, suicide, it goes without saying, was not an option. First of all, it’s a sin. Second, it’s hard, it’s messy, it requires a lot of initiative and motivation; you need to be a self-starter. But above all, it is not considerate, it would inflict too much pain and guilt on your loved ones, not to mention how boiling mad they would be at her for doing this to them, how unforgiving and lacking in understanding or sympathy.