Someone once said that when you die of hypothermia, you get cold and sleepy, things slow down, and then you just drift away. You don’t feel a thing. That sounded nice. That was the best way to die—awake and dreaming, feeling nothing. I could take the train to Coney Island, I thought, walk along the beach in the freezing wind, and swim out into the ocean. Then I’d just float on my back looking up at the stars, go numb, get sleepy, drift, drift. Isn’t it only fair that I should get to choose how I’ll die? I wouldn’t die like my father did, passive and quiet while the cancer ate him alive. At
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