'Poster boy' for death

This past year hasn't been kind to Art Buchwald, the 80-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning political satirist whose Washington Post column has poked fun at politicians for 50 years.

Buchwald lost a leg in February due to blood clots. When his kidneys failed due to diabetes, doctors told him that his age made him a poor candidate for a transplant. And dialysis, a five-hour "washing-machine process," did not cheer him up.

So he told his family at the end of February that he would pass on daily dialysis and accept the fact that it was his time to go. Buchwald was admitted to the Washington Home and Hospice, where he was expected to live a week or two. Then he began entertaining visitors, including such famous people as Mike Wallace and Tom Brokaw.

"I wasn't nervous at all that so many of my visitors were famous," Buchwald said by phone from his Washington, D.C., home. "I was flattered that they wanted to say goodbye.

"Besides, when I was a foster child I fantasized that some day I would be famous. So the hospice people rolled my bed out and let me set up a salon in the lounge — and I held court. Everyone who came complained about the parking, so I said, 'Dying is easy, parking is impossible."'

Like most people, Buchwald knew next to nothing about what a hospice is. "It was harder to get into than Harvard," he said. But once he did get in, he was impressed with the facilities and the people.

The only thing is, a hospice is designed to assist a dying person in the last week or two of life. Buchwald surprised the personnel by living well beyond the two weeks. Inexplicably, Buchwald's kidneys started working again — and they continue to work. "So after a couple of months, I said, 'I'm still just sitting here. To hell with it! I'm going to go back to writing the column. Cathy Crary, my associate, wrote while I dictated."'

After he had made fun of his own condition in his column for a few weeks — he wrote that he had a recurring dream that he was at Dulles Airport about to depart on a flight to heaven, but before he could board he was put on standby — an editor at Random House called and suggested that he write a book.

Buchwald was taken aback by the proposal. "I said, 'Suppose I'm not here when the book is finished?' The editor wasn't concerned about that. So I became a poster boy for death. I started dictating the book to Cathy."