Grant

by Ron Chernow

Frail, emaciated, starving to death from his inability to eat, he wore warm clothing in the early summer heat. His wit never abandoned him. Sneaking peeks at news headlines, he told Dr. Shrady that The New York Times has been “killing me off for a year. If it does not change, it will get it right in time.”111 Racing against the Grim Reaper, Grant put in several hours of work per day, often pausing, short of breath, after an hour. Unable to talk any longer, he kept a pad and pencil at his side, scribbling tiny notes to family and doctors. “About an hour ago,” he wrote to Dr. Douglas, “I coughed up a piece of stringy matter about the size of a small lizard.”112 In another message he wrote, “I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; or to suffer. I signify all three.”113 One day, when he seemed to drift off into the twilight of death, he suddenly awoke. “I was passing away peacefully and soon all would have been over,” he wrote. “It was like falling asleep.” There was something poignant about Grant as he mutely raised his eyes, searching the faces of interlocutors. As Buck said, “His eyes were always expressive and it hurt me to look at him and see his suffering . . . Watching him suffer was the hardest thing I have ever been through.”114