“There’ve been quite a few slapstick moments,” I said. “Her forgetting to bring the pills, and then this thing that happened a couple of days ago. As I told you, her plan is not to let me know exactly when she’ll be taking the pills. One day you’ll wake up and it will be done, she said. You’ll know because the door to my room will be closed. She always sleeps with the bedroom door ajar, a habit she got into when she had cats, and sleeping in a closed room tends to make her feel claustrophobic, she said. So, that morning I got up earlier than usual—it was still dark—and saw that her door was closed. What did I do? I panicked. I was afraid I was going to faint. I went to the kitchen and threw up in the sink. Then I poured a glass of water, but my mouth was working so violently I couldn’t drink it. I sat down at the kitchen table and broke down. I kept trying over and over to get a hold of myself, but I couldn’t. I did finally manage to drink the water. I’m not sure how much time passed, it couldn’t have been very much, but it had started to get light out. And all of a sudden I hear a noise, and the next thing she’s strolling into the kitchen. It turns out she’d had the window open—a rare thing, because she’s always cold, especially at night, no matter how steamy it is out there—and sometime during the night the wind blew the fucking door shut.”

“I know I shouldn’t laugh,” he said again, “but it does sound a little like a sitcom. Lucy and Ethel Do Euthanasia.”

“Oh, believe me, we laughed about it too,” I said. “In fact, no one would believe the amount of laughter that’s gone on in that house since we got there. But that was only later. At the time, I didn’t think it was funny at all. At the time, I was literally shaking with rage. I wanted to break everything in the house, but I settled for throwing the water glass against a wall.”

“And how did she respond to that?”

“Totally cool. All she said was ‘Do you really think it’s fair for you to be mad at me for still being alive?’ And then of course you can imagine how I felt. But as I say, we did laugh about it later. It’s amazing how she’s managed to keep her sense of humor. She even managed to see a silver lining. Think of it as a run-through, she said. Now that you know what it’s going to be like, you’ll be prepared.”

Even though I had thought it many times, Dying becomes her was not something I could bring myself to say out loud.