When Patrick Mead took his father, Bill Mead, to live in a dementia care facility the week after Thanksgiving, he taped a note to his dad’s door. Mead wanted the staff members to know about the new resident in Room 14, even if his father couldn’t tell them himself.

“My name is Bill Mead,” the letter began. “I was born in abject poverty. I became a warrior (U.S. Navy, Korea War era). I then laid aside my weapons and became a minister and missionary. I traveled the world, spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. …

A New York moment:

I popped into a Compassion and Choices “community listening session” about the bill in New York to legalize physician-assisted suicide (or as the group terms it, “medical aid in dying”). That bill would allow physicians to prescribe fatal drugs that terminal patients would self-administer. Disability groups chiefly oppose the practice on the grounds that it would put economic and emotional pressure on the vulnerable or “less valuable" to end their lives. 

A new law will allow Japan’s Emperor Akihito, who would otherwise have had to serve for life, to abdicate; he plans to step down in 2019 at the age of 85. This extreme approach to tenure contrasts with America’s federal judges: Firing one would take a (literal) act of Congress, but they’re free to leave whenever they choose.

Roger Ailes

77 / May 18 / Former cable news executive and aide to President Richard Nixon, he founded Fox News in 1996, led it to ratings success (surpassing CNN), and saw it become a major influence in American conservatism. Thrice married, he resigned in 2016 amid a sex abuse scandal and died following an injurious fall.

Officials in West Chester, Pa., are investigating the cause of a massive fire that engulfed a senior living center overnight, sending at least 20 people to the hospital. The blaze started at about 11 p.m. and quickly spread to several buildings. Television news footage showed flames shooting out of broken windows and through the roofs. Residents, many in wheelchairs and hospital beds, waited outside on the sidewalk, wrapped in blankets. The local fire chief declined to say whether anyone died in the blaze or comment on the extent of the injuries.

The last chapter of Deuteronomy records how Moses at age 120 had “his vision undimmed and his vigor unabated.” Deuteronomy does not describe his emotional state. Many centuries later rabbis speculated that Moses wanted so much to live on, and see what happened next, that he agitatedly pleaded with God to keep him alive, even as an animal. In the rabbinical story God says no, so Moses calms down, blesses his people, and says he will see them again at the resurrection of the dead.