Opinion: Nine lessons from dying

Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.
Jonathan Clements, 61, at his home with a mug of coffee. Photo / Hannah Yoon, The Washington Post
Jonathan Clements is the founder of HumbleDollar.com and the former personal finance columnist for the Wall Street Journal.
OPINION

What if you were told you had a year to live? Life coaches sometimes
pose questions like this to help folks figure out what’s truly important to them. But for me, this isn’t a theoretical question.

On May 21, on the cusp of retirement and at the not-so-grand age of 61, I learned I had stage-four cancer, which started in my lungs and has since metastasised to my brain and elsewhere. All this is the result of a defective gene – one that’s relatively rare – and the treatment plan isn’t terribly promising. What have I learned in the months since?
The real pleasure is in the day-to-day. Yes, my wife, Elaine, and I have various trips booked for the months ahead, including Ireland, Paris and London. But for me, the greatest joy lies in the everyday – that first cup of coffee, writing and editing, exercising, taking a nap, going out to dinner.
Making progress still feels awfully good. We humans aren’t built to relax. Rather, we’re built to strive. Thanks to the restlessness we inherited from our nomadic ancestors, nobody really wants to stop and smell the roses – and that includes me, despite the limited time I have left.
Every day, I’m at the breakfast table before dawn, pounding away at the laptop. You’ll find me smiling at the tap-tap-tap of the keyboard – and the thought that somebody somewhere might find my words helpful.
No, I’m not spending like there’s no tomorrow, even if there isn’t one. I have a seven-figure portfolio that was supposed to pay for my retirement, but will instead help pay for the retirement of others. I could, of course, go on a glorious spending spree – first-class travel, luxury hotels, fine art. But after a lifetime of thrift, that sort of spending would make me uncomfortable, plus I’d be taking money from Elaine and my two children, and why would I want to do that?
Everybody wants a piece of me. I’ve heard from acquaintances I haven’t seen in decades. Some want to travel to Philadelphia to see me, which may be a good use of their time, but it sure doesn’t feel like a wise way to use what little time I have left. More than once, I’ve joked to my wife that these folks want one last look at the corpse.
Elaine doesn’t care much for my jokes.
Dying is a busy time. It isn’t just all my correspondents and visitors. If you want to help your family by leaving behind a well-organized estate – and that’s at the top of my list of priorities – there are countless things to do, including tossing out old financial papers, closing credit cards and financial accounts, revising your will and other estate-planning documents, creating financial instructions for family members, and so much more.
I thought I had my financial affairs in good order, and yet I’ve been working at this pretty much daily since my diagnosis. There’s a surprising amount still to do. Sound boring? In truth, at a time when I’ve largely lost control of my destiny, it feels good to bring order to this one small corner of my life.
The risks that strike are often the ones we least expect. Over the decades, I’ve fretted over all kinds of health issues. Should I work harder to lower my cholesterol? Will my pre-diabetes turn into full-blown diabetes? Should I drink less wine or perhaps eliminate it entirely? But while there were many things on my 2024 bingo card, lung cancer wasn’t among them. My family has scant history of cancer and I last had a cigarette at age 23, yet here I am with a terminal diagnosis.
Death is roughest on those left behind. I’m determined to make the most of whatever days I have left. I refuse to be angry, feel cheated or wonder why I got unlucky. Instead, I want to milk as much happiness as possible out of my remaining time. But I’ve discovered my cheery attitude is rough on those around me. They want to grieve my passing, and my refusal to join in only makes their grief harder to bear.
Everybody has cancer advice. As I’ve learned since my diagnosis, there are countless types of cancer and countless treatment plans, and what helped others likely won’t help me.
I’ve been advised by my email correspondents that I should be travelling the country from one cancer centre to another, with the suggestion that anything less means my laziness is inviting a quick demise. But the truth is, for my particular cancer-causing defective gene, there’s only one viable treatment plan, and I’d almost certainly be advised to follow the same plan no matter which cancer centre I visited.
That hasn’t stopped total strangers from offering unsolicited advice that’s completely irrelevant to my situation. While some are pushing quack cures and perhaps hoping to profit from them, I assume most people have good intentions. Still, I’m not sure there’s much kindness in offering useless advice to those whose time has suddenly become so precious.
Talk about dying, and people will tell you you’re brave. Really? What do folks expect me to do? Slink away like a wounded animal and die in a dark corner? It hadn’t occurred to me that death was a taboo topic. We might talk often of the dead. But dying itself doesn’t get nearly so much attention. Fingers crossed, perhaps my end will be the spark that starts your family’s conversation.
Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.