Erin and I had only been living in our house in Sonoma County’s Oakmont Village, an  “active living, over-fifty five” community for one month when the Neptune Society invited us to a free lunch at the Golf Club to a discuss a discount cremation package that was 10 percent off if we filled out the paper work that day, and 25 percent cheaper if we died before the chicken Caesar salad was served.

We were tired of unpacking and boxes everywhere, and I was thrilled by the presentation — everyone was so nice and friendly — and I signed up for the cremation package immediately. I wanted to have all the details ironed out and paid for so Erin’s adult daughters wouldn’t have to fret when we passed peacefully away in the night.  

Erin soon found a cheaper deal with another cremation company — she’s expert at finding deals— when our new friend Jessie—that’s not her real name — invited us and a few other friends to her house for a demonstration of how to use of nitrogen gas to terminate yourself when you are ready to die. I was all intrigued. All in. Not Erin. She’s not convinced she wants to kill herself when the time comes.

It was an odd and sober event, sort of like a Tupperware Party,  with hot tea and homemade chocolate chip cookies, only no one was selling anything, and the goal was learning how to commit suicide in a painless way. Eight of us sat around Jessie’s dining room table while she and a friend, who had assisted in her terminally ill daughter’s death, demonstrated how to put a plastic turkey-baking bag over your head, connect it via a silicone tube to a tank of nitrogen gas you buy at a farm-supply store, and tie the bag loosely around your head. Turn on the nitrogen, et voila, you’re unconscious in about fifteen minutes and dead within an hour.

It was a sobering conversation, and I was grateful for everyone’s honesty and compassion. It turned out several of the guests had been through the agonizing death of a friend or family member who’d felt their only alternative to a prolonged, painful illness was suicide by firearms, a devastating prospect for them and their families.

Jessie explained that you buy the gas at farm supply stores, but if they ask, you don’t tell them you want to buy the nitrogen to kill yourself when you’re mortally ill. You tell them you want to put the gas in your truck tires. Note to self: Find out why you put nitrogen in tractor or truck tires.

Erin is not enthusiastic about the nitrogen gas as a way to terminate her life, or mine, and we haven’t bought any yet. We’re both in excellent health. But I plan to get a small tank. You don’t need a lot.

I like being free to talk about death. You don’t find that in everyone. We even have a club at Oakmont called Cafe Mortel, where we talk about death. The speaker last week showed us how to prepare a chart where we write down exactly how we want our final exit to be: What songs we’d like played or sung to us by our friends or the Harmony Choir; who we wish to or who we really DON’T want to visit us at the bedside; even what view we’d like to gaze at from our window when we’re stuck in bed. All that, of course, is in addition to having completed our living will and right-to-die documents. There are plenty of meetings that help you deal with that. 

But this nitrogen gas could be a goddess-send. If you’ve read the book by Mitch Album, who wrote Tuesdays with Morrie, you know it’s not all that easy to die, even in right to die countries like Switzerland and in some states, because you have to be six months from death and totally rational, which is a real problem if you have dementia.

Don’t get the wrong idea. Erin and I are living life to the fullest here at Oakmont. We hike several times a week, play pingpong with the Rainbow women Tuesday nights; play golf with the Women’s Nine and Wine on Wednesdays (minus the wine for me — I’ve been sober since 1983. I line dance on Wednesday nights, do water aerobics with Erin on Tuesday and Thursday, and march for justice at least once a month.

It’s all good, as they say. I’d like to tell you more, but I have to run to my writing group, where the timed write exercise will be — “feelings about your death,” of course. Or pets in your life. I haven’t decided.

I’ll tell you about our dogs next time. Or maybe I’d rather talk about ordering our tombstone in Baltimore. It’s up now and waiting for us.

Footnote: My new book Heat is out – Order now!