Here, the prolific food writer M.F.K. Fisher writes to her sister, Norah, and her two daughters, Anna and Mary, about arrangements for her death. Fisher, known for her memoir-infused cookbooks and witty historical works such as Consider the Oyster (the forerunner to the lobster essay of a similar name), developed Parkinson’s toward the end of her life. She insisted on passing in her own home, which she designed herself and dubbed “Last House.”
I want to tell you what some of you may have to think about, since chronologically I’ll not outlive any of you…
I wish and want and hope to die in my own home. Some of you may want to help me do this.
Rex Kennedy told us that he wanted to die in his own house, “at home.” It was difficult at times, and even painful and unpleasant, but we brought it off. And I must tell you that I myself feel that it was worth any physical and perhaps spiritual inconveniences I had to put up with for a time…quarreling nurses, sad and sometimes very scary character-changes in my father. A few hours before Rex died, in a cosmic rage at finding himself only mortal…and I know he was frightened too…Dr. Bruff said, “You must keep in your mind that this is not your father, the man you have known.” This helped me accept the raging roaring old lion in his next-to-last hours, and the suspicious wily fox perhaps five days before that. It was not Rex, really, or at least it was not the man I knew as my father and friend.
And this may happen with me, although I, and all of you, devoutly hope that it will not, and that I can leave the scene easily.
BUT…
I want to leave it either by myself or with a few friends, HERE, or with you.
I know that nurses, either RN or “practical,” are hard to find and hard to live with. But they exist. And the situation by the time they are needed is a temporary one. As for the expense, they cost no more than the kind of rest-home or nursing-home you might find, that you would want me to end my life in. There are a few, perhaps, but we all know that most of them are simply living graveyards…and that living corpses are not often treated as decently as dead ones.
I hope to leave enough available cash to take care of such possible expenses. If there is not enough, you will simply have to borrow for more. It will be worth the doing, believe me, a few years along…
As for the personal physical side, I feel sad if you must try to carry out this wish of mine. I apologize to you now, for whatever trials it may put you through, and I thank you with all my heart. Between and among you, there will be enough energy and love to see the thing through. It may mean a temporary displacement, and it may even change the lives of your children or your friends, but I believe that it will not be bad, eventually. And meanwhile, I’ll send this little manifesto to you, and then leave it lay where Jesus flang it.
What it comes down to is that I hope somebody will enable me to die in my own bed, if I do indeed need help then.
With love and thanks…
[MFKF]
From Fisher, M. F. K., et al. M.F.K. Fisher, a Life in Letters :Correspondence, 1929- 1991. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1997.