“I am a firm believer that you shouldn’t have any more operations when you’re older. I always thought I would just die, and that’s exactly what I plan to do in the next few weeks.”

Mrs. Robinson, a late cabaret singer, world traveler and valued friend, died on July 21, 10 days after she launched the first of a series of interviews with this first conversation.

A friend of hers contacted the Boston Globe on July 11, requesting an obituary for Mrs. Robinson, whose matter-of-fact approach to death had become an inspiration to everyone she knew.

Reading her observations about life and death, the friend said, could help others.

With clarity and dry humor, Ms. Robinson held court at her Brookline home before leaving for hospice, ensuring that visitors left her apartment wearing earrings and choice clothing from her closet.

“Women have loved my earrings, so why wouldn’t I give them to them when I can see the joy on their faces,” Ms Robinson said. “I just want to be generous. I have wonderful friends.”

She had previously spoken to the Globe in 2016 when her husband, Robert Spangenberg, was mentioned in an obituary. He had been involved in legal aid for Boston’s poorest residents.

She had worked with him in the office for years. “I was a cog in the machine,” she said. “I am still proud of that work today. It was a very important time for me to do good.”

Although Ms. Robinson’s husband was in the spotlight because of his well-known work, “it is her death that makes her newsworthy – the way she chose not to prolong her illness, not to undergo procedures that would have bought her time but not health,” Globe columnist Beverly Beckham wrote in an email, suggesting that her friend should have her own obituary.

“She accepted her death sentence and just accepted it,” Beckham wrote. “She said, ‘Okay, I guess we’ll do this, but my way.’ And that’s what she did.”

They became friends after Ms. Robinson read Beckham’s columns about how he took cabaret singing lessons from John O’Neil and sang at the Club Café in the South End/Back Bay neighborhood.

Mrs. Robinson followed suit – from O’Neil’s lessons to open mic nights at the club – and even recorded a CD of songs in her mid-70s.

In telephone conversations with the Globe shortly before her death, she spoke about how best to live and how best to die.

“If I call it that, I just want to go on to my next adventure, and that’s fine with me,” she said. “I’m a practicing Episcopalian, but when it’s time to die, I’m ready to go. I’ve had an interesting life, but it’s time, according to the sun and the moon and the stars.”

She didn’t know how long she had left to live – “My stomach cancer is more active now.” Painkillers made the waking hours more bearable, but they also slowly shrank her world.

“The morphine is great,” she said once. Another time, she shook off a memory that was sharp at first but then faded and blurred. “I’m sorry to tell you, but I’m completely foggy.”

As an accomplished storyteller, she delighted her friends with her stories. And on stage at the Club Café, she found and emphasized the common thread in everything she sang.

“Focusing on the story helped Carol express her humanity and the humanity of each song. And it was a joy to tell stories,” said O’Neil, her teacher and friend.

“On stage,” he said, “Carol just radiated warmth and joy.”

She sang “with a very special delivery,” said her friend Linda Marks, an award-winning singer and songwriter who this year wrote “It’s Okay to Die,” a song inspired by and dedicated to Ms. Robinson. “She made a song her own – with a certain intensity.”

And when Ms. Robinson wasn’t on stage, she sat at a table in the club, listening attentively to the other singers and encouraging them.

“People will remember her as a fixture on both sides of the audience,” Marks said.

Carol Robinson was born in Boston on September 24, 1943, and grew up in Milton, the youngest child and only daughter of Pauline Hopkins Robinson and Dr. Charles Anthony Robinson, chief of vascular surgery at Carney Hospital.

At 17, Mrs. Robinson appeared for the first time at the Globe, alongside her father, in a photographic exhibition of a debutante ball.

After graduating from the Jeanne d’Arc Academy in Milton, Ms. Robinson began her world travels, which eventually took her to Venice, Italy and China.

At 18, she embarked on an adventurous road trip through Europe with a friend. “We didn’t know what we were doing,” said Ms. Robinson. “We were two beautiful women traveling alone.”

In The In the following years she studied at the New York Institute for Interior Design and the New School for Social Research, worked in the city and tried her hand at writing short stories before returning to Boston, where she worked for a time in advertising and public relations.

Mrs. Robinson left many memories for her friends, but no one who immediately survived her. Her first two marriages were relatively short and ended in divorce. She survived her three brothers, Charles Jr., Henry and Paul, her third husband, Robert, and her partner, Paul Brodeur.

A service will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday at Grace Episcopal Church in Newton. Friends will also gather at 11:30 a.m. on September 15 at the Club Cafe to celebrate her life.

When Robert died, Mrs Robinson saw herself as a cabaret singer, a career she began in her late 60s. After putting an end to her musical life, she began performing at the Club Café.

“I love singing,” she said. “I never thought something like this would fall into my lap.”

When cancer left her unable to attend the Club Café, she entertained friends in Brookline and then at Care Dimensions Hospice House in Lincoln.

“It’s spectacular,” she said after moving in. “I look at this abundance of beautiful trees and birds fluttering back and forth and–“Bombs in the trees and chirping and giggling.”

Mrs Robinson “was her own person before people became their own people,” Beckham said by phone on Saturday, and she set a special example in the face of death.

“Some people teach us how to live,” Beckham said. “She taught me how to die, and she did it with dignity.”

With barely more than a week left, Mrs Robinson said on the phone that she was “not afraid, not at all afraid of dying, because we will all experience that. We just don’t know when or how.”

On this day, among other things, she wanted to sit on the veranda in the middle of nature.

“It’s OK to die,” she said. “Life is beautiful – enjoy every moment you can. Enjoy, but love too. As the saying goes, live each day as if it were your last, because one day you’ll surely be right.”

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Bryan Marquard can be reached at [email protected].