Records of Dying

​We received the deadly diagnosis on September 23, 2013. By the next month, I had started recording our conversations. In early February 2017, I listened to them again, what I heard was very different from what I heard when I listened to them after David’s funeral. Listening to them again, I am struck by how analytical they are, how they all insist on factual information, how they constantly face the inevitable fact of David’s death. We faced it every day, and on some days, not often, we discussed what I would do when David died. In his last few months, he would often ask me, “where will you go when I die?” I would answer, “I don’t have the energy to even think about that now.” It took me two years of energy to decide where to go, and another year to actually move.