Judy and Mike Baggs can’t agree where to host the party. Judy thinks the house will work best, because they have a huge yard, plus they’ve never had a housewarming. Mike argues it’d be less stressful to hold it at the Gulfport Casino. The topic keeps coming up, fading behind other things, then moving to the forefront again. Millie, a Yorkshire terrier no bigger than a well-fed squirrel, curls into an even tinier ball on the couch next to Mike, sighs, and closes her eyes.
These are the sorts of fights a couple has after 36 years of marriage, not so much “fight” as “discussion,” not so much anger as frustration, not so much “win or lose” but an ongoing sense of compromise that leaves no one in tears or feeling as though the world is ending.
It’s not just any party they’re trying to plan — it’s a funeral: Judy’s.
They’re having another fight, too, about where Judy gets to die.
“I don’t want to die in this house,” she tells him, almost comical the way the slim Georgia-born belle stands up to the beefy ex-marine.
“What if I put a bed here,” he bargains, gesturing toward the French doors overlooking their oak-shaded backyard, “so you can see outside?”
Judy shrugs and steps into the backyard, leaving the subject — and her husband — in the dark bedroom. For nearly four decades they’ve spent almost every moment together, running various businesses as a team. This year, they’ll celebrate their first Christmas in their dream home. The city decorates a southern red cedar tree steps away in Clymer Park, and at night the lights dance in the prism glass of Mike and Judy’s front door.
“That whole door is a moving door,” Judy says, and her smile reaches her grey eyes. She loves her home; renovations to make it perfect took 18 months, and after those months of too-slow contractors and living in their own garage apartment, they moved into their dream home in May.
“How long do I have?” Judy asked her.
“Six months to a year.”
Judy first received an endometrial/uterine cancer diagnosis in 2012. The cancer hadn’t spread to her lymph nodes, and her oncologist had high hopes. As recently as January, Judy remained cancer-free, but in April a checkup revealed a small tumor. PET scans revealed more than one tumor in more than one place. Her first Christmas in her dream home will also be her last.
She could have treatment and maybe last a few more months, but why? Quality, not quantity, of life is her preference.
“If I have six months to live and I’m in bed for six months, what have I done?” she asks. “I’d rather die than have to be in bed all that time. It doesn’t do a thing for me, it just makes life harder for him.”
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s seminal book, On Death and Dying, outlined how the terminally ill deal with death. Kübler-Ross outlined the stages a dying person experiences: shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Throughout, the dying cling to hope — until they reach a final stage, decathexis, best summarized as detachment.
That’s when hope leaves.
Judy has no hope. Three years ago she wanted to beat the cancer. Right now, she wants to die after the holidays.
“I don’t want to mess up anyone’s Christmas,” she says.
Mike doesn’t want Judy to die at all; she is the love of his life. But he agrees with her choice, and, despite arguments over the details, they agree on one thing: As with everything else in their marriage, they’re going through her death together.
“A long time ago we were at Billy’s Stone Crab,” he remembers, “and we were watching this big sport fisherman come flying up that channel. It was full speed.” They thought for sure he was going to hit the dock and be killed, but at the end he maneuvered his boat into a slip. “Every time we start talking we go back to this guy. Don’t creep up on it. Do whatever you can do until that’s it.”
As she runs out the clock, that’s Judy’s plan. Instead of bargaining for more time, she’s getting ready to die. She doesn’t want to travel; she wants to enjoy her home. She worries about Mike, how he’ll be with her gone.
She’s assembling a notebook for him, reminding him not to put Millie’s blankets in the dryer. She’s bought dishwasher pods so he can’t make a mess with the soap. She’s having someone come in to organize their pantry so he’ll know when he’s low on ketchup. At her request, Mike has had Millie certified as a therapy dog so they’ll have something to do together when she’s dead.
“She’s going to be his saving grace. She’s going to be the glue for him,” and although she doesn’t say “after I’m dead,” there’s no doubt what she means.
She doesn’t want a funeral after she dies — “I want people to remember me like this,” she says — but she’s OK with a living funeral, one Mike can have with her beside him. But the question of where to hold it persists.
“I think you should just have something in the park, let people wander in and out, and have food here,” she tells him, not for the first time.
“That’s not fun for me,” he says.
“This is my party,” she reminds him. “I don’t want the Casino thing.” After all, she reasons, how many people would even want to come to a funeral for a woman who isn’t dead yet? She can’t imagine there being enough guests to fill the Casino, and envisions just a small gathering at the house. When Mike reminds her that her birthday party three years ago — also held at the Casino and a total surprise for Judy — had 200 people, she says, “It would upset some people that we’re having a celebration of life and I’m still here.”
Judy knows some of her friends struggle as they watch her discuss her death as if it were happening to someone else.
They don’t understand how she can make the choice to forego chemo and, with dry eyes, plan for her death.
Notebooks for after she’s dead? Planning her own funeral? Discussing where she’ll take her last breath? She admits she doesn’t understand it herself.
“I do wonder why I can look at it the way I do,” she says. “It doesn’t seem real.”
“It’s real to me,” Mike tells her.
The other fight is harder, and it continues as they move to the back deck. One reason Judy doesn’t want to die in her home? She’s a Realtor, and she’s worried future buyers won’t like knowing a woman died there.
“I could care less what somebody else thinks about the house,” Mike says. “This is what we built together, as our last house, and it’s only fitting that you stay here.”
The fight continues as Millie grabs an empty water bottle and races around the back deck. Judy reaches down to play with the dog, keeping the water bottle just out of reach, then giving it to her. Millie runs off with her treasure, crackling it in her tiny jaws, but a minute later, she’s back, begging Judy to play some more. And for a moment, Judy escapes.
“The important thing is that I don’t contaminate the house, mentally,” Judy says.
“You’re talking really brave right now, but… I can’t see you being in the hospital, [with] very nice people I’m sure. But it’s still not us. That’s what I’ve been really worried about is that you’re going to make me promise that I’ll take you to the hospital, and… and I can’t do that.”
“This is the first time he cried,” Judy says, going inside to get a box of tissues.
“I can’t tell her how I really feel, because then it makes her feel bad,” Mike says as he watches Judy disappear inside the kitchen. “I don’t talk to many people, not like this. And that’s the hardest part, is that I don’t have my best friend to talk to.”
“I love it here. I love looking out the window and seeing these palm trees,” Judy says as she sits down next to Mike, handing him a tissue. “When I’m sick or I don’t feel good, all I want is you and Millie.”
“I need to be there when you’re at your worst,” he says, his voice breaking. It takes him a moment to find his voice again; when he does, it’s a whisper. “Don’t make me take you to a hospital. I’m pretty tough, but I cannot deal with that. I don’t care what happens, as long as I’m there.”
“OK,” she tells him, tears on her cheeks, too, and this is the one time she does cry. “I won’t make you do that.”