Matt liked the word fuck. He said it added character to whatever you're saying, that it even added humor, like say, if you put the words "fuck" and "grandma" in the same sentence, the sentence would become funny. For example, "My grandmother fucking knitted me a sweater yesterday." When he first said this, I giggled until I wet my pants.
      It was funny then. "My salamander fucking ate his food today," and "The grass is fucking growing." I would laugh and laugh.
      "I'm fucking dying," Matt started saying over and over to himself. "I'm fucking dying. Can you believe it Mary, I'm fucking dying."
      And I really couldn't because I thought every person who had a slow death was ready to go. That's why I never felt bad for them. Isn't that why people always ask, "Well was it sudden or did they know?" because, naturally, knowing seems like a good thing.
      "My fucking potatoes are cold," he would say when the nurse brought him his food. But they weren't cold.
      Sometimes he would eat them and complain and sometimes he would say, "Get rid of them Mary, I won't eat them."
      I kept waiting for the moment. You know, the moment that happens when someone knows they're going to die and they say, "Don't worry about me, I will be happier on the other side."
      I waited and waited and thought it was coming one day when he ate his potatoes without even a word. He took a sip of his apple juice, stroked his hair and made eye contact with me.
      "The potatoes are fucking cold," he said.
      So I left the room to see if the nurse had any other kind of food to offer. When I came back his eyes were closed, and they never opened again. Just like that, and when people ask me if it was sudden or slow, I say, "Well, it felt sudden," because it never really felt like he was actually dying, with him saying the word fuck all the time, because really, you can't possibly come off as transcendent when you keep cursing your potatoes everyday.