John Lithgow — Who Has Survived Cancer 3 Times — Hopes for a ‘Good Ending’ that ‘No One Grieves Over’
https://people.com/john-lithgow-age-79-had-cancer-three-times-talks-about-death-rachel-martin-podcast-8756812/
John Lithgow — Who Has Survived Cancer 3 Times — Hopes for a ‘Good Ending’ that ‘No One Grieves Over’
https://people.com/john-lithgow-age-79-had-cancer-three-times-talks-about-death-rachel-martin-podcast-8756812/
3 comments
John Lithgow:
>“I directed that wonderful New Yorker, Doug McGrath, in his one-man show that he’d written for himself. And he didn’t show up at the theater one night because, in his office by himself at about four in the afternoon, he’d lain down, had a heart attack and died at age 64.”
>”It was such a traumatic thing to experience. He died painlessly and almost courteously. He didn’t make anybody else suffer over his death except over the fact that it had happened like that. I was startled at how soon I was able to absorb it. It’s just having happened and the new reality. This lovely man, who was quite a dear friend having worked together so closely, he was simply gone, and I knew that he was gone.”
>“I just know it’s coming. It’s coming, and I think the best thing is to have a gracious ending. I calculate my exit from any film or television or stage play, and I always wanna have a good ending. Well, I wanna have a good ending to my life, too — that that no one grieves over, and is appropriate.”
>”I can’t believe I’m talking about these things. I’ve had three cancers in my life. First in 1988, 2004, and then only a couple of years ago. In every case, dealt with immediately and put an end to — you know, melanomas that could be removed, detected early and removed. A prostatectomy that eliminated prostate cancer from my life. But I’m almost glad that I had the shocking experience of being told you have a malignancy,” he said, sharing that the experiences forced him “to have realistically contemplated, ‘Oh my God, this might really — I might die of this.’”
>”I think it was a useful experience to have in terms of just putting your whole life into perspective.”
Three times? I thought a near miss was bad.
I’ve seen too many stories lately of painful deaths that take days or weeks of suffering for some cancers I think that heart attack certainly would be welcome.
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