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to make. It was her illness and her death, hers and nobody else’s. Whether you want to let others inon your battle with a life-threatening disease isn’t how you want to die, it’s how you want to live.
    I have been astonished that some people have criticized it, that they think they have any right to judge. Christopher Hitchens, the writer who chronicled his battle with cancer in article after article, chose to examine his illness minutely, letting everyone in on the pain, the medicine, the madness, and the endgame. Robin Roberts of ABC’s
Good Morning America
, who had a bone marrow transplant, took viewers along with her, inviting cameras into her hospital room, demystifying, erasing stigma, dramatically increasing the number of bone marrow donors. They are both heroes to me, as is my sister. There is no right way. We’re talking about death. It’s okay to be scared witless. I say that because it might be my way.
    Secrets are tricky, no question about it. They can eat away at you, especially if they involve guilt or shame. Mostly no one can keep them. Ben Franklin said the only way three people can keep a secret is if two of them are dead. (Maybe Ben’s sister said that and Ben borrowed it.) Secret-keeping where illness is concerned requires an ability to mask. Not everyone can do that. Gossip is ugly when it’s mean-spirited or gleeful about someone else’s catastrophe. But sometimes gossip isn’t gossip, it’s onlysharing, a way to understand, make sense of life, lessen confusion, dissipate fear.
    In the case of my sister, there were a host of considerations. Her movie career might have been compromised. Would actors commit? Would the studio allow it? You can direct if you are known to be sick, but you need another director to agree to finish the film just in case (which is what Robert Altman had arranged before he died). If you are famous and you are sick and you tell, you become a famous sick person. You can’t draw a line. If you’re out there with it, everyone, I mean
everyone
, knows it. And because they have read your books or seen your movies and loved or identified with them/you, people on the street feel familiar enough to offer comfort, confide their own traumas, pray for you (which is not something most atheists crave) when, despite good intentions, what they’re also doing is reminding you that you are sick. Also, Nora loved fun, and if friends knew she was sick, that might get in the way of it—in the way of their fun for sure, hers too depending on how well denial was working.
    Telling is also a loss of control. Of power. The person with the secret is the person with the power. (Remember the roses.)
    Nora told many people she loved them during the last months of her life, but without letting them know whyshe suddenly went mushy. I think having people cry over her would have been too much. That’s just a guess.
    (Again those roses.)
    Many people, some whom I know, some curious strangers, ask me if we debated telling. And some writers have insinuated that she had an obligation to the living. They were poleaxed. How dare she?
    If I had said to Nora, which I wouldn’t have because it was not the point and unfair besides, but if I had said, “So-and-so will be upset not to know,” I like to think she might have said, “I’ll be dead.” I like to think she’d say it because she always knew to call a spade a spade. Meaning
It’s not my problem
, but much more to the point,
I’m the one who is dying. I’m the one who is fucked. They have the luxury of being upset about it.
That doesn’t mean she didn’t love everyone. Of course her children did know, and a few others who were very close, but everyone else will survive.
    When she entered the hospital we almost did release the information, but then changed our minds. In retrospect, it seems the right choice, because the news coverage would have overwhelmed/distressed her, all of us, and diverted energy and focus. But we didn’t expect her