by - Former President Jimmy Carter said at a 2019 service that he was “comfortable with death.” He was 95.
- Carter, now 98, had cancer in 2015 and said he expects he will “die very quickly”.
- He received an experimental treatment and went into remission. Eight years later he entered the hospice.
Former President Jimmy Carter is not afraid of death.
As the oldest living former president, his thoughts on dying – which he shared after surviving a serious cancer diagnosis – offer a glimpse of how he views end-of-life care.
At a service in late 2019, the then 95-year-old said when he learned in 2015 that he had cancer – and that it had already spread to his brain – he thought he was going to “die very quickly”.
“I’ve obviously been praying about it. I didn’t ask God to let me live, but I asked God to give me an appropriate attitude towards death. And I’ve found that I’m absolutely, completely comfortable with death,” Carter said in 2019, according to CNN.
He added: “It didn’t really matter to me if I died or survived. Except that I would miss my family and the work at the Carter Center and sometimes miss the Sunday School service and so on. All those lovely things.”
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter attend the funeral of former President George HW Bush last year.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
The nation’s 39th president became cancer-free in just four months after undergoing experimental treatment and has continued to work for Habitat for Humanity and the Carter Center.
Carter continued to speak and teach regularly in Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, well into his 90’s.
On Saturday, February 18, 2023, the Carter Center released a statement saying the now 98-year-old had elected to stop receiving medical intervention and receive hospice care after “a series of brief hospitalizations,” and ” has the full support of his family and medical team.”
He and his wife Rosalynn, 95, also hold the record for longest-married presidential couple. They grew up together in Plains and Rosalynn’s younger sister was even named Lillian in honor of Jimmy’s mother.
Carter’s health began to deteriorate in recent years, including the injuries he sustained twice at his home in 2019. The first fall required stitches to his forehead, but the next day he was back building homes for Habitat for Humanity. The second fall was more serious and involved a small fractured pelvis, CNN reported.
