briefly about "Mortality" by Christopher Hitchens

British-American author and public intellectual Christopher Hitchens was diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 2010 and died December 2011. Mortality is his final work, a meandering collection of essays penned during his painful physical decline. Mentally and emotionally, however, judging by this book, Hitchens stayed the picture of health. In these pages he imparts the experience of dying slowly, offers up a couple memories and lessons learned, and renews his atheism. Hitchens subtly urges us to appreciate health--our speaking voice, in particular. And, about that health, he aims to disabuse us of the idea that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. This last point is not to say that Hitchens regrets his steady flow of cigarettes, scotch, wine, and the late nights he spent with friends; it just seems that life--his especially--necessitates many loosely calculated risks. In the way of an end-of-life perspective, he writes,

So we are left with something quite unusual in the annals of unsentimental approaches to extinction: not the wish to die with dignity but the desire to have died.