My aunt - one of 9 kids, and the only one who assiduously avoided alcohol and tobacco - died at 60 from cancer on her tongue. It took about 6 months from diagnosis to death.<p>You never know when your life will change. Death is possible anytime, but also an accident, injury, death of a loved one, it can be anything. I had an early-to-mid-life crisis in my early 30s where my own mortality became much more real to me and it altered my thinking and behavior.<p>I honestly can’t say if a quick, sudden, unexpected death is preferable to a long, drawn out, terminal death that gives a long time for careful thinking and study. I think I would prefer the latter despite the indignities and pain that you succumb to, as the author clearly shows. The idea that you can be walking down the street and have a heart attack or aneurysm is deeply disturbing to me, although I know people who died this way and it is a fairly likely way to die.<p>We should always, always, always be thankful for what we have. If you wake up and you can walk, if your children are healthy, if you have food to eat. So often today we let small grievances and petty issues ruin our happiness. In reality these problems are nothing compared to true suffering.<p>A friend is a hospice worker for dying children, who helps assemble their memory books and plan their final events and wishes. She does this work week after week with multiple children at a time. Imagining the slow death of my own child, planning memories, explaining to them about heaven, it is an astronomical amount of suffering that I cannot force myself to follow a logical thought experiment to conclusion.<p>I have followed along with this brave man’s story. It can happen to anyone, at any time.<p>One idea that comforts me is that every single living creature that existed before me has died, and every creature that exists now will die, and everything in the future will die. You cannot have the gift of life without the curse of death. While we all die alone, we all experience death - it is only lonely in the actual experience but it is something that all of us will participate in.