The Final Trip
We don’t talk much about death, because the dark beyond we all face terrifies us so much we try to avoid the subject. Our terror of death is one reason – a big one – that humanity is so crazy. It unnerves me, too – and it doesn’t. I’ve been on its doorstep. It’s more overwhelming for those who don’t want you to leave.
That brings me to Mark Dowie’s new book, Judith Letting Go, the remarkable story of his unique, six-moth love affair with a woman who had chosen the day of her death. Judith Tannenbaum chose to “let go” even though she was still full of love for life, because she suffered from a rare medical condition accompanied by excruciating pain, a physical torment for which there was no treatment. The story of the two-person “Death Café” that Judith and Mark formed in the last months of her life – which ended on December 4, 2019 – and the intimate conversations they shared at her modest home in El Cerrito, California are truly unforgettable. The little paperback – just 118 pages – is the most moving thing Dowie has done as a writer. And he’s done a lot.
I met Mark Dowie in 1981, when he was the friendly (and handsome) investigative editor of Mother Jones magazine, and I was the new staff member on the block. Even then, Dowie was something of a legend, the author of the seminal investigative article on the Ford Pinto, the exploding car that Ford valued over its human victims, and the co-author of the Dalkon Shield exposé, the birth-control implant that ripped apart the insides of women. After Mother Jones, Dowie went on to author ten books, including a critical one on the toothless environmental movement (Losing Ground), as well as to teach at the University of California- Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
Mark also has led a very full life, as a young Wyoming ranch hand, businessman and investigative guru. His stories over drinks are full of eyebrow-raising tales. Wait, you did what?
He just mentions these jaw-dropping anecdotes about himself in passing.
So, when Mark mentioned to me that he had helped a number of people in their final hours, I was not surprised. But Judith’s story got my attention, and I encouraged him – as a fellow journalist – to tell this memorable story.
Dowie remains happily married to the same woman he met back in the ‘80s, artist Wendy Schwartz. But his evolving relationship with Judith, though it was not sexual, surprised them both. His connection with Judith grew more emotionally intense as she drew closer to death.
Judith Tannenbaum was the mother and aunt of two grown, loving women when Dowie was introduced to her by a mutual friend. She was also the daughter of a 100-year-old woman who lived nearby. Judith wrote poetry and taught it to inmates at San Quentin, the maximum-security prison across the San Francisco Bay. The men she taught – including one lifer – loved and respected her. She also had taught in the Mendocino public school system.
She loved life. And she was determined to end it on a precise day.
The finality of their relationship gave it a special character, Dowie writes.
“Because my relationship with Judith was untrammeled by attachments, plans, secrets, fears of abandonment, and also free of complexity, commitment, duties, promises, and even the normative expectations of friendship, it became, as we both observed, ‘pure.’ I never thought before that there could actually be a relationship, a friendship that could be described as pure. But I was wrong, and here it was, kept so by the certainty and totality of its ending. We both knew, throughout, not only that it was going to end but also precisely when.
“To others in our lives, particularly my wife Wendy, it seemed at times ‘unfair… too easy.’ And in a way, Wendy was right. It was easy. Despite the looming heartbreak and constant profundity of our story’s inevitable ending.”
There is wonder and mystery and love and heartache in Judith Letting Go. As there is in life and death. I encourage all mortal people to read the book. It will live on in your thoughts.
