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Jimmy Carter's Long Goodbye [View all]
Feb. 17, 2024
The former president is on the verge of having spent a year in hospice care, once again confounding expectations in a life that has lasted nearly a century.
Mr. Carter entered hospice care one year ago Sunday, choosing to forgo further life-prolonging treatment with the intent to return to his simple home in Plains, Ga., to pass his final days in comfort and peace. As it turns out, there have been more final days than he or anyone around him anticipated.
The former president’s long goodbye has defied the odds and absorbed many around the world who have spent the last 12 months honoring his memory even as he has refused to follow anyone else’s timetable. Hospice care is meant to ease the end for both patient and family, prescribed for those with less than six months to live. About half of those who enter hospice care last no more than 17 days. Just 6 percent are still alive a year later. Mr. Carter, the only president ever to live to age 99, seems destined to keep pushing the limits.
“He’s been a record-breaker for decades — the oldest-living president, the longest-married president,” said Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend from Plains who visits him regularly. “It’s always been on President Carter’s terms. That’s how he’s living, and that’s how he’s going to die.”
His endurance at the end may serve as a rejoinder to those who never recognized his tenacity. “Carter once told me that he thought the biggest misconception about him was that he is weak,” said Jonathan Alter, author of “His Very Best,” a biography of Mr. Carter. “He wasn’t, as either a person or a president. In truth, this slight man — called ‘Peewee’ as a boy — is a person of extraordinary toughness and grit.”
The one-year anniversary of entering hospice care is not marked as if it were a holiday, but by chance for Mr. Carter it will fall the day before Presidents’ Day, so Ms. Stuckey’s park will host a discussion of his life.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/17/us/politics/jimmy-carter-hospice-anniversary.html
The former president is on the verge of having spent a year in hospice care, once again confounding expectations in a life that has lasted nearly a century.
Mr. Carter entered hospice care one year ago Sunday, choosing to forgo further life-prolonging treatment with the intent to return to his simple home in Plains, Ga., to pass his final days in comfort and peace. As it turns out, there have been more final days than he or anyone around him anticipated.
The former president’s long goodbye has defied the odds and absorbed many around the world who have spent the last 12 months honoring his memory even as he has refused to follow anyone else’s timetable. Hospice care is meant to ease the end for both patient and family, prescribed for those with less than six months to live. About half of those who enter hospice care last no more than 17 days. Just 6 percent are still alive a year later. Mr. Carter, the only president ever to live to age 99, seems destined to keep pushing the limits.
“He’s been a record-breaker for decades — the oldest-living president, the longest-married president,” said Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend from Plains who visits him regularly. “It’s always been on President Carter’s terms. That’s how he’s living, and that’s how he’s going to die.”
His endurance at the end may serve as a rejoinder to those who never recognized his tenacity. “Carter once told me that he thought the biggest misconception about him was that he is weak,” said Jonathan Alter, author of “His Very Best,” a biography of Mr. Carter. “He wasn’t, as either a person or a president. In truth, this slight man — called ‘Peewee’ as a boy — is a person of extraordinary toughness and grit.”
The one-year anniversary of entering hospice care is not marked as if it were a holiday, but by chance for Mr. Carter it will fall the day before Presidents’ Day, so Ms. Stuckey’s park will host a discussion of his life.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/17/us/politics/jimmy-carter-hospice-anniversary.html
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