Jimmy Carter's final chapter: peanut butter ice cream, 99th birthday [View all]

[Tanuki]

I wish he could live forever! He will,of course, live on in his good works and his inspiring example. We can do our part by supporting the Carter Center and its ongoing mission for world peace, human rights, and fighting diseases.

https://www.cartercenter.org/donate/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/21/us/politics/jimmy-carter-hospice.html

"Maybe it’s the peanut butter ice cream he still enjoys. Or the fact that his first-place Atlanta Braves are cruising toward the playoffs and he wants to see another World Series. Or as many of his loved ones and former advisers suggest, maybe he is just too stubborn to follow anyone else’s timetable.

Whatever the reason, seven months after entering hospice care, Jimmy Carter is still hanging on, thank you very much, and is in fact heading toward his 99th birthday in just over a week. While nearly everyone, including his family, assumed that the end was imminent when he gave up full-scale medical care last winter, the farmer-turned-president has once again defied expectations.

“We thought at the beginning of this process that it was going to be in five or so days,” Jason Carter, his grandson, said in an interview, recalling the former president’s decision to check out of the hospital and go into hospice care at his home in Plains, Ga., last February. “I was down there with him in the hospital and then said goodbye. And then we thought it was going to be in that week that it was coming to the end. And it’s just now been seven months.”

Mr. Carter was already the longest-living president in American history, but his staying power even in hospice has captured the imagination of many admirers around the world. It has generated an extended farewell, one that was unplanned yet remarkably affectionate for a president who was turned out of power by voters after a single term yet transformed his legacy with decades of service that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the months since he returned to his small-town home to meet his final fate, the outpouring of remembrances has been heartening to his family and friends. Instead of a memorial service he could not attend, Mr. Carter has experienced a living eulogy, soaking up tributes from around the globe. Relatives and advisers say he is aware of what has been written and said, and is deeply grateful."...(more)