• Home
  • About
    • About Last Night
    • Terry Teachout
    • Contact
  • AJBlogCentral
  • ArtsJournal

About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

Joy in the afternoon

April 3, 2020 by Terry Teachout

This is, first of all, an expression of profound gratitude. I knew that many people were following the unfolding story of my beloved Hilary, but I had no idea how many until I posted this tribute shortly after her death on Tuesday night. It has since drawn more than one hundred and twenty thousand hits—far more than anything else I have ever posted in this space—and I have also received innumerable messages of sympathy here, on Twitter and Facebook, and via e-mail. I’ve tried to answer as many as I could, but the flood of incoming messages has overwhelmed me at last. To those whose warm words go unanswered, I say: thank you from the bottom of my heart for your supreme kindness. What you have written has been of great help at a hard time, and I shall cherish it all the days of my life.

Allow me to let one of your messages stand for the rest:

You and Hilary, and your love for one another, are an inspiration. People really want to believe in that sort of love, especially right now.

I hope so.

*  *  *

I thought you might like to read about Hilary’s last good day.

Weakened by a decade and a half of ceaseless battle against pulmonary hypertension and the double-lung transplant surgery that we had long hoped would cure it, she was now suffering from an acute bacterial infection for which she was being treated by an antibiotic that so far had failed to reverse her rapid decline, aggravated by kidney failure and various other urgent problems. I arrived at New York-Presbyterian Hospital at midday on Monday assuming that I would be telling Hilary’s doctors to let her die as peacefully as possible, and I’d already warned her family to expect as much. I spoke to her about the gravity of her condition to prepare her for what was to come. She was intubated and unable to speak, but I could tell that she understood what I was saying.

As we prepared to start the complicated paperwork necessary to withdraw life-sustaining measures, Selim Arcasoy, the lung-transplant specialist in charge of Hilary’s case, called to tell me that he had just conferred with the rest of her transplant team and a group of infectious-diseases doctors, and that they were unanimous in believing there to be a small but “non-zero” possibility (as one of them put it) that they could still get the infection under control. I felt that the decision to continue treatment should be left to Hilary, so I laid the situation out to her, then said, “Darling, this is very important—you must make your wishes clear to me. If you want to continue the antibiotics, blink.” She blinked, unambiguously and right on cue.

I told the doctors to hold off on the paperwork and went back into her room. Then an inspiration came to me. “Sweetheart, let’s listen to some happy music,” I said. I opened up my MacBook Air and booted up iTunes, and we spent the next hour and a half listening to joyous records that I knew she liked: Louis Armstrong’s “Back o’ Town Blues,” Leonard Bernstein’s Candide Overture, Johnny Cash’s “Get Rhythm,” Ry Cooder’s “FDR in Trinidad,” Paul Simon’s “Graceland,” Stephen Sondheim’s “Getting Married Today.” Her eyes opened fully for the first time in a month, then grew wide with what I knew was pleasure. I thought: This may be our last real day together—and it’s been a good day, a day we wouldn’t have had without Dr. Arcasoy.

The very last thing I played was the chamber-orchestra version of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, a piece that had always been close to both our hearts. By then, Hilary was clearly growing tired, and I kissed her and went home to rest up for whatever was to follow, completely drained but profoundly happy.

She died the following night, peacefully and without struggle.

*  *  *

To learn more about Hilary’s rare illness, go here.

To find out how to become an organ donor, go here.

To donate to the Pulmonary Hypertension Association, go here.

Filed Under: main

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

@Terryteachout1

Tweets by TerryTeachout1

Archives

April 2020
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930  
« Mar   May »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Terry Teachout, 65
  • Gripping musical melodrama
  • Replay: Somerset Maugham in 1965
  • Almanac: Somerset Maugham on sentimentality
  • Snapshot: Richard Strauss conducts Till Eulenspiegel

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in