Judith
I wanted to love people
“I remember the time when I was about
4 years old; I thought “I wonder where all
the people who died really went?” And
I remember asking people about it and
nobody seemed to know, just like that,
nobody knew.
I wanted to live doing a lot of different
things. Of course I wanted to love people, both men and women, just loving
them as a person and I always wanted to
have children. I never really was afraid of
periment. And that was totally up to him.
But I’ve seen with my whole family that
they’re the same way, always looking for
a cure and I said: “I’m in hospice because
I’m dying.” I mean people are born and
people die, that’s part of life but we don’t
deal with it, we don’t talk about. It gets
better, after you talk about it for a long
time. I mean it isn’t something you talk
about for a minute and get.
I think Michael, my son and I are still
dying when I was the only one who had
dealing with leaving each other and we
afraid, I just thought, Jamie was here. And
look at your son who is in his 20s and say,
a brain tumor because I just... I wasn’t
then just about a year had passed and
then Jamie woke up one morning and he
said: “I’m very sick would you please call
an ambulance.” So we had two cranioto-
mies and two brain tumors within a year.
And Jamie died fourteen months after
his diagnosis and he died like a scientist
would die. He wanted to be in every ex-
are in the throws of that. And it’s rough, to
“I won’t see my grandkids, I won’t see your
guitar playing and I won’t see which field
you go in, which of course is going to be
great.” And I feel now that I’ve lived about
as long as I can live. There’s a few things
that’s ending too short. But if I really look
back and think about everything, I’m very
happy about my life.”
Judith and I met at Zen Hospice Project in Hayes Valley, San Francisco. A Boston native,
Judith moved to the Bay Area as a young woman where she pursued a career as an oral
historian, working with illiterate communities in the East Bay. Judith’s room at the hospice
was filled with colorful items, objects of meaning and new things that made her happy. She
might have been dying, but she was still alive, and each week she would tell me of new
friendships she was making. Judith had the same brain cancer her husband died of and
she knew that when she died she would be leaving her young son behind with no parents.
With deep love for her son, she committed herself to ensuring that they communicated
openly and honestly about what they were both experiencing.
26 | ART OF DYING