vjw's Quantum Physics Overview

Joan Feynman [Feynman's sister]: One day I got Gweneth [Feynman's wife] on the phone and asked her, you know, what's happening? And she told me, "Richard says he wants to die, and that it's your decision." My decision? That was sort of unexpected.

I think he must have figured out ahead of time, "How do you tell when it's time to quit? When you're feeling sick and you're feeling terrible you might say it's time to quit. But if you have courage you wouldn't." So I think that what he must have done is decide that when he felt it was time to die, and if Gweneth and I agreed, then it was time to go.

. . .When I came in he was lying there and he said: "Decision?" Because he couldn't talk very well. I said: "Yes, you're going to die." And his whole body just relaxed. . . . He apologized to Dr. Morton, the cancer specialist. He apologized for dying.

. . . He soon went into a coma . . . In the coma, his hand was moving, and Gweneth said that the doctors had told her that the motion is automatic, and it doesn't mean anything. So this man who had been in a coma for a day and a half or something, and hadn't moved, picks up his hands, and goes like this, like a magician, as if to say, "Nothing up my sleeve," and then he put his hands behind his head. It was to tell us that when you're in a coma you can hear, and you can think.

The other message which I think he wanted out was a little later. He pulled himself up out of the coma and opened his eyes briefly and said, "This dying is boring", and then went back into the coma. This sense of humor is a bit macabre, but that's what he said. That is the last thing he said.

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