Amanda Peet’s essay is striking for its frank, unsentimental account of an incredibly harrowing time in her life. Her restrained style—avoiding melodrama and letting details speak for themselves—makes the emotions hit even harder. For anyone who has experienced hospice, her portrayal feels searingly familiar, capturing what it is to live at the very edge of what you can bear.
I flew to New York. I didn’t make it before my father took his last breath, but I got to see his body before it was taken from his apartment. My sister, who is a doctor and usually the stoic one, wept. I just stood there in a state of morbid fascination. I had never seen a dead body up close before, let alone someone so familiar to me. His hair was still the same—thick, mostly brown—and my sister and I thanked him for our own abundant heads. His signature club thumbs, which were the only fat, brutish things about him, were the same as ever. But his mouth was open and drooped peculiarly to one side, and his skin was sucked into his skeleton like a vacuum storage bag. I felt guilty for not crying, but at least I got a reprieve from guessing how much longer I had to live.
More picks on hospice
The Coloradans Exercising Their Right To Die—and a Doctor Who Helps Them Find Peace
“More terminally ill Coloradans than ever are turning to Denver Health’s Medical Aid in Dying clinic. We spent the summer witnessing the quiet decisions and final moments of those who chose when—and how—to say goodbye.”
Sent Home to Die
In New Orleans, hospitals sent infected COVID patients into hospice facilities or back home to die — to family members untrained and unprepared to care for them — and in some cases discontinuing treatment against the family’s wishes.
Ushering My Father to a (Mostly) Good Death
A personal essay in which Karen Brown recalls conspiring with her father in his final weeks to find some humor in the pain.
