The Man Who Wouldn\’t Die
There is so much news this morning, but when someone so large passes it\’s important to stop an honor the life.
Art Buchwald cheated death until the last moment. He lived on and on in spite of failing health and dire prognosis.
There is only one reason. He had the spirit and heart of one thousand angels,
or if you prefer, ten thousand knights.
Many followed his refusal to submit to his physical realities. If you\’ve ever
known anyone who has fought a doctor\’s prognosis, well, you likely can appreciate
his story. I\’ve seen it in my own family; likely you have too.
God\’s speed, Mr. Buchwald. It was indeed a very good life.
"I just don\’t want to die the same day Castro dies," Buchwald told
his friends, Bradlee said. …(snip)
Buchwald also wrote about his bouts with mental disorders with a frankness
that won him new fans around the country. He had been hospitalized for clinical
depression in 1963 and for manic depression in 1987. Both episodes nearly
drove him to suicide, he said; drugs and therapy were his salvation. He joked
to friends that if he had a third bout of depression, "I will be inducted
in the Bipolar Hall of Fame."(snip)
His columns about Paris nightlife and jet-setting celebrities were carried
in New York by the Herald Tribune under the name "Europe\’s Lighter Side."
Ernest Hemingway, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Gina Lollobrigida, Aristotle
Onassis, Pablo Picasso, Elvis Presley, E.B. White and uncrowned heads of international
society made their way into Buchwald\’s pieces, turning him into something
of a celebrity expatriate himself.The column for which he is best known managed to drop names from several
centuries earlier. In 1953, with help from newsroom colleagues, Buchwald undertook
to explain the meaning of the Thanksgiving Day feast to the French with laughable
translations of the American tradition. It was the only day, he noted, that
American families "eat better than the French."Many newspapers ran it annually for years afterward.
(snip)
"So far things are going my way. I am known in the hospice as The Man
Who Wouldn\’t Die. How long they allow me to stay here is another problem.
I don\’t know where I\’d go now, or if people would still want to see me if
I weren\’t in a hospice. But in case you\’re wondering, I\’m having a swell time
— the best time of my life."
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