How should a person die, she said. Get her the dummies’ guide. Oh but forget books, she didn’t want to read anything, she didn’t want to do research, she said. It was funny, she said, for a while that is what I wanted, or thought I wanted, to educate myself, the way I did about the cancer itself, to find out as much as I could, and God knows I learned a ton, much of it quite interesting, even fascinating, she said, I sank into it, and reading about it I forgot what I was reading, if that makes any sense, I mean at times I was so absorbed in the material I forgot why I was studying it, and isn’t that the wonderful thing about reading, how it takes you out of yourself. But all that’s changed, she said. I have no desire to read about dying, or death, what the great minds, what the philosophers had to say about it, you could tell me that the smartest person in the world had just written the most brilliant book on the subject and I wouldn’t touch it. I don’t care. Just as I have no desire to write about what I’m going through. I don’t want to spend my last days in the same struggle, the struggle to find the right words—curse of my life, when I think about it. Which surprised me, she said, because at first I thought of course I should write about it, and I would write about it, my last book about last things, or the thing, the distinguished thing, I should say, she said, quoting Henry James. Wouldn’t it be impossible not to write about it I thought, my friend said. But very soon I changed my mind. I changed my mind, my friend said again, and I know I won’t change it back. The idea of writing about what I’m going through makes me sick, she said. Not that I’m not already sick, literally, sick to death, quite literally, what a thought, she said, laughing. You see, there I go again with the fucking words. But what I mean, she said, is that I’ve had it. I’ve done enough languaging. I’m sick of writing, sick of word searching. I’ve said enough—I’ve said too much. I wish— Am I making any sense?

I assured her that she was making sense, and that she should keep talking.

I’ve decided I’ll write about it only if I discover something new to say about it, she said. Which won’t happen.

A good death, she said. Everyone knows what that means. Free of pain, or at least not convulsing in agony. Going out with poise, with a little dignity. Clean and dry. But how often did that happen? Not often, in fact. And why was that? Why was that too much to ask?