This is the writer's voice, new fiction from the New Yorker. I'm Deborah

Treisman fiction editor at the New Yorker. On this episode of the writer's voice will hear

Lori Siegel read her story Beyond Imagining from the June 10th 2024 issue of

the magazine. Siegel's most recent books are the journal I Did Not Keep, New and Selected Writing, and Ladies Lunch

and Other Stories, which came out last year.

Now here's Lori Seagull. Beyond imagining, Ruth, Bessie Lottie, Rose, Farrah, and Bridget, who had been lunching together

for half a century, joined in later years by Ilka Hope and occasionally Lucinelli had agreed without the need for discussion

that they were not going to pass, pass away and under no circumstances on.

They were going to die.

It was now several years since Lottie had died

in an assisted living facility.

Then when COVID worried that children, Ruth had undertaken to

Zoom Lady's lunch. She suggested that anyone who had something to say should show a hand.

Farra put up her hand.

She said, I don't find it difficult to think about

then pause and surprise as not being able to say dying about choosing not to live if I'm

going blind.

Bessie zooming from old Rockingham said that would be Colin's choice when he hurts and he

hurts all the time.

Bridget raised a hand.

I think that the reason I think I won't mind being dead is that I can't imagine it and I don't

think we know how to believe what we aren't able to imagine.

...