The Art Of Being Art
Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist Art Buchwald died last night. Correspondent and friend Rita Braver remembers the man she, and so many others, knew.
A few years ago I went to a comedy performance where Buchwald was appearing along with some hip young television writers and political pundits. Guess who stole the show? Even when he was in the hospice, he was making jokes. He claimed that when Donald Rumsfeld came to see him there he told him, "Don, if you get fired, we got a room for you here at the hospice."
As much as we and the rest of his friends loved seeing him, we dreaded trying to find a parking space near the hospice. Everyone complained about it. Buchwald claimed it gave him new perspective on life: "Dying is easy, Parking is hard."
My husband and I had known Buchwald for many years. But we really started visiting him at the hospice because when he went there last year, thinking he was going to die, he wrote "farewell" letters to many old friends, including us. We decided to go to see him to say good-bye. We found him holding court in the reception room, sitting in a large recliner, an IV strapped to his arm. Instead of the awkward, deathbed visit we had dreaded, we ended up having an hour of hilarious chat and gossip, with Art explaining why he'd decided to forego kidney dialysis, and how much he loved confounding all of the doctors as his kidney function actually improved. After that we began visiting him just about every week and saw that he never lost his sense of humor. He was always asking us to engage in games like naming "Five People You WOULDN'T Like To Meet In Heaven." One of his top picks was a lady who once stole a parking space from him.
No one was as surprised as Art was when he didn't die, but instead, left the hospice to spend the summer in Martha's Vineyard and to write a book. A few weeks ago I interviewed him for the CBS News broadcast, "Sunday Morning." It turned out to be one of the last interviews he ever gave.
I asked Art to analyze why his time in the hospice got so much publicity (which by the way, he adored). He said "It was one of those things...where you gotta go see Artie..so pretty soon people in the television and on radio and in the newspapers all said..'Hey Buchwald's dying in a hospice. Go over there, it could be a good story.' And that's what it was, a good story."
He also claimed that while in the hospice he had so much free time that he called a sperm bank to offer to make donations "so I could leave a lot of little Arties all over the place...and I said I'll give you 12 deposits a week, that's all I can give you, cause I'm 80 years old." He was just kidding about that one. (I think.)
Art was lucky because when he left the hospice he was able to return to the home he shared with his loving son Joel, daughter-in-law Tamera and grandchildren Tate and Corbin. Art passed his final days there, and when my husband and I went to see him this past Sunday, it was clear that Artie didn't have much time left. He couldn't really talk, but as we were saying good-bye, he whispered, "come back." We promised we would, but he was gone before we could keep that promise.
Somehow, though, I think he knows how much we loved him, and how much we hope he never runs into any of those people he doesn't want to meet in heaven.
