There’s this blogger I know who is dying; her body is giving out on her. I don’t mean she’s got something that will eventually get her; I mean she’s in that final Departure Lounge. And she’s writing about it in a way — like most of her writing — that is powerful, visceral and sometimes raw.

So I’ll just get out of the way and let her tell it…

There is no way to make this easy so here it is, I’m dying, and probably fairly soon. I am going to try to use a series of letters about the emotional experience around dying and my thinking about that to share where I am and what I am feeling [...] my life is coming to an end. Now that could be a couple hundred days away, or maybe if we get the right equipment in time, even longer, or of course, much shorter.

I asked a nurse on the lung unit who saw that I was on oxygen and my fingers were purple, my lips blue, what exactly was the progression, what intervention could they do? … The blue will advance or the black until it goes to the shoulders. And the solution? The only thing they can do is increase the flow; give me a face mask. And after that? There is no after that.

Elizabeth McClung (Screw Bronze): A Letter on Dying #1

I hope that when my time comes I have the bravery to face up to it like she is doing. Because we’re all going to die in the end. And when it’s my turn, I want to be able to look death in the eye, and tell it I wouldn’t have done a damn thing differently, except maybe look more closely before I stepped out into the road.

And then just go and see what, if anything, happens next …