Diane Rehm, NPR host: 'Too many of us are afraid to speak about death'

After her husband fell ill with Parkinson’s, Rehm was criticized for attending right-to-die fundraisers. Now she has written an intimate memoir about his death

At 2am the night her husband died, Diane Rehm began writing what would turn into a memoir of her life as a widow.

The radio host had been trying, unsuccessfully, to sleep fully dressed on two chairs next to his bed. “I remember getting up and looking at my watch and then setting up my iPad and just starting to type,” says Rehm, who at 79 has been the voice of NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show for more than 30 years. “I don’t even remember what I wrote – just what I was experiencing being in the room with my husband of all those years, who was passing from one life into another.”

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