Buchwald's son, Joel, who was with his father, disclosed the satirist's death, saying he had passed away quietly at his home late Wednesday with his family. Buchwald had refused dialysis treatments for his failing kidneys last year and was expected to die within weeks of moving to a hospice on Feb. 7. But he lived to return home and even write a book about his experiences.

"The last year he had the opportunity for a victory lap and I think he was really grateful for it," Joel Buchwald said. "He had an opportunity to write his book about his experience and he went out the way he wanted to go, on his own terms." Neither Buchwald nor his doctors could explain how he survived in such grave condition, and he didn't seem to mind.

The unexpected lease on life gave Buchwald, a Pulitzer Prize winner, time for an extended and extraordinarily public goodbye, as he held court daily in a hospice salon with a procession of family, friends and acquaintances. "I'm going out the way very few people do," he told The Associated Press in April.

Buchwald said in numerous interviews after his decision became public that he was not afraid to die, that he was not depressed about his fate and that he was, in fact, having the time of his life. Often called "The Wit of Washington" during his years here, Buchwald's name became synonymous with political satire. He was well known, too, for his wide smile and affinity for cigars. Among his more famous witticisms: "If you attack the establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make you a member of it." Naturally, he found the humor in his choice to renounce dialysis, and he wrote about it in some final columns.

"I am known in the hospice as The Man Who Wouldn't Die," Buchwald wrote in March. "How long they allow me to stay here is another problem. I don't know where I'd go now, or if people would still want to see me if I wasn't in a hospice. "But in case you're wondering, I'm having a swell time _ the best time of my life."