At 31, I have just weeks to live. Here's what I want to pass on

I'm sorry to hear of your family's struggles. Your advice is spot on and something I discovered during a 10-day Vipassana retreat. I wish I could say something to help your daughter or you. Maybe that beauty and happiness are possible in the smallest of everyday things even as we deal with horrific pain. It gets better somehow.

I'm not sure how to interpret what you have written but assuming good faith - there are things and states worse than death, particularly when analyzed from the point of view of the individual. It is widely considered humane to terminate the life of a suffering animal when no hope of recovery is possible. Such a thing could even be considered an act of love. Depending on a deeper analysis of free will and religion it is feasible that a God is both capable of controlling your death and simultaneously loving you. I'm not a serious believer so I will leave the free will discussion and points of doctrine to others.

"Meditating on death" and "premeditation of future ills" is a big theme in Stoicism (and the broader 'Hellenistic Philosophy'). Seneca's letters have many different exhortations on "preparing for death". Some choice quotes:

• "Many people grasp and hold on to life, like those caught by a flash flood who grasp at weeds and brambles. Most are tossed about between the fear of death and the torments of life: they do not want to live but do not know how to die. Cast off your solicitude for life, then, and in doing so make life enjoyable for yourself. No good thing benefits us while we have it unless we are mentally prepared for the loss of it." — Seneca

• "Epicurus says 'It is a fine thing to learn death thoroughly.' Perhaps you think it is a waste of time to learn something you will need to use only once. But that is the very reason we ought to rehearse: if we cannot test whether we know it, we should be learning it always." — Seneca riffing on Epicurus (not to be confused with Epictetus, a Stoic; he even has a discourse titled "Against Epicurus")

• "As the water clock does not empty out its last drop only but also whatever dripped through it before, so our last hour of existence is not the only time we die but just the only time we finish dying. Death is not one event; the death that takes us is our last." — Seneca

• "Years are not given out by quota. There's no way to know the point where death lies waiting for you, you must wait for death at every point." — Seneca

• "Let death be before your eyes every day, and you will never have a base thought or an excessive desire." — Marcus Aurelius

• "The torment we feel comes about through our own agency, because we become alarmed when we believe that death is close at hand. But isn't it close to everyone, ready in place and every moment?" — Seneca

• "Think about arranging the present as best as you can, with serene mind. All else is carried away as by a river." — Horace

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Sources for quotations: Seneca's 'Letters on Ethics' (full set of letters, excellently translated by Graver and Long); the others are from 'What is Ancient Philosophy?' by Pierre Hadot.

> > Looking back we had no idea how close we were to the end

Happened to me as well, on several occasions.

My dad passed away just before New Year a few months ago. At the time I thought him going to hospital was going to be yet another scare, and he should just get his act together and eat properly and exercise. Never got around to it, and his last words were some gibberish.

I felt like maybe there should have been proper last words, but looking back there were. His terminal stage had actually started a few years before, at a bypass surgery. At the time he told me that if the surgery didn't work, he'd be happy to die. Life had treated him just fine, no big issues with anyone to report. Happy with having three kids and a couple of grandchildren. Nothing left to do.

And so the next three years passed with him not doing anything the doctors had told him to do, and we got used to periodic ambulance calls (heart attacks, blood sugar incidents). Somehow he made his life summary come true, nothing more to do.

On another occasion, one of my high school classmates passed away from cancer at 29. I knew he'd had it before, but then it seemed to pass, and being young I thought it wasn't a huge problem because he seemed chipper and full of zest. He had a girlfriend and a career. When it came back I figured I'd drop by to see him, but in a few weeks on my holiday. Ended up being sooner, for his funeral.

I'm the same age and not at all at peace with my mortality - the dominant feeling being envy of those who get to live after my death.

If I wrote a book with ghosts, zombies or other undead I would give the antagonists this as their reasons for hating the living.

Anyway that point about vulnerability is spot on. When I hug my SO I often reflexively blurt something among the lines of "softness is important", but what I really mean by that is vulnerability is important - this is something I had to learn from her and it's what helped me improve myself as a person.