I understand it’s a thing now, people making videos and arranging to have them delivered posthumously to one or more persons whom they knew in life. In some cases the video is intended to be shown at the deceased’s memorial service. I’m not sure why, but I find it hard to imagine this being done in any way that doesn’t feel cheesy.

The podcast my friend had told me about, the one she’d made at the request of a hospital social worker to answer questions about what it was like to be terminally ill, and which she afterward regretted—as I’d suspected, it’s not as bad as she made it sound. I, at least, would not describe it, as she did, as her going “off the rails,” even though she made me wince a few times. What will I miss most? I won’t miss anything, I’ll be dead. I won’t have any feelings. Brittle little laugh.

She sounds irked. She is irked. (How often has it been said of me that I don’t suffer fools.)

A surprise: asked whether she’d thought of taking her own life, without hesitation she answers no, when in fact we know this thought had been with her from the day of her diagnosis.

Regrets?

Not that she hadn’t spent more time with her daughter, not that she hadn’t succeeded in making amends with her, but rather that she hadn’t had another child (a statement that obviously can be read in two ways).

How she loathes the term bucket list. How she prefers fatal to terminal. Not only does she not believe in an afterlife, she is gobsmacked that so many people do believe in one.

Probably it was her tone that she regretted. She didn’t want to appear angry or bitter. To be emotional over your own death was unbecoming (her use of that word on the podcast was one winceable moment). To the end, she clung to an image of stoical poise.