by, Renee Wood

In June 2026 it will be almost a year since I finished my last book. It was my autobiography, which covered most of my life span. When I finished the book, the cancer had spread to my liver, so naturally my days were limited. However, it’s a year later and I’m still here.

The last few months have not been easy. I fractured my back in three different places, on two separate occasions, so I was in extreme pain. I teased myself and said, “It was only a dress rehearsal for the real pain I’ll be in at the end with cancer.” Plus, my 83‑year‑old husband, Floris, broke his hip on St. Patrick’s Day. He was already using a wheelchair and has multiple health issues. Any elderly person who breaks their hip is almost a sign of rapid deterioration. I’m also undergoing aggressive chemo to prolong my life. This was already taking a toll on my energy, so fighting the medical system to give my husband a chance to recover the best he could was daunting on top of everything else. But I was still alive, and once we started to recover, I wondered what else there was left for me to do.

As I was struggling with pain and the effects of chemo, my husband said something to me that made me realize I needed to either write another short book, or at least an essay, on death and dying. My husband was not exactly thrilled with my behavior one day and I thought I heard him say, “Why can’t you die gracefully?” He says he said, “Why can’t you die graciously”? Either way it puts the onus on the dying person to make those around them feel comfortable.

I pondered that question and wondered what it meant to die “gracefully”. I looked up the behavioral definition of grace. I found: “Social/emotional grace — responding with kindness, patience, or generosity, especially when it’s hard. ‘He handled the criticism with grace.’” Graciously is who you are toward others. Displaying kindness, courtesy, warmth, generosity, and making others feel at ease.

It’s one thing not to make other people intentionally suffer when you are going through a difficult situation. But is it your job to see to it that people feel comfortable with an ugly situation?

One thing that struck me when my husband made this comment about “dying gracefully” or “graciously” is that he himself was going through a life‑altering event, breaking his hip, and although he was well on his way to pretty much a full recovery, at times in the beginning he was anything but “gracious.” That doesn’t mean he didn’t display moments of grace equal to moments of frustration. Overall, I understood where he was coming from and would never have said he should be more graceful about the situation.

On top of this, when he made that comment, it had nothing to do with me dying. I was having a frank discussion with my caregiver about something. My husband is hard of hearing and could not hear the context of our conversation, so he just went by the tone of my voice. It was one of our better caregivers, so he was operating out of the fear that she might leave. Most vulnerable people who need caregiving operate out of this fear modality. That’s how people get taken advantage of. I operate out of logic and let the chips fall where they may, hoping that honesty will pan out in the end.

Another thought, isn’t it funny that when someone has an illness that will end their life, everyone blames everything on that — even things that have absolutely nothing to do with it? It seems like people, or at least my husband, think I think about dying all the time. The fact is I think about it very little, and when I do, it’s more of a peaceful thing than an anxiety‑ridden thing. It feels like they’re transferring their own fears and preconceived ideas about death onto me, so no matter what I do, it’s because I’m dying.

The truth is, to date, my doctors have never said I have six months or less to live. To me, that is when you are dying. There is no indication from the recent CAT scans that I will die within six months. Am I going to die of ovarian cancer? More than likely. But they have given up predicting for good reasons — very rarely do you ever see a woman with advanced‑stage ovarian cancer, with at least four recurrences and metastasis to the liver, survive nine years. It’s almost unheard of. That right there probably indicates I’m dying with some grace because I am not anxious.

People who are close to me are probably more anxious about my dying than I am. To me that’s not right or wrong — it’s just the nature of loving someone. And if I were in their shoes, I would probably feel the same way. I will never tell someone how they should feel about my situation. So why would anyone say I should be more gracious to others while dying? If I were not already gracious in my ordinary life (which I am not claiming I am, or  not), then why would they expect me to change when I’m dying?

Also, it’s funny — dying is the only state that I don’t think you can have a mentor in. People don’t die and come back and say, “Oh, I should have done this differently.” In other words, those who have died do not come back and talk about it. People and professionals have all kinds of suggestions, but the truth is they’ve never been through it — so they don’t know. Dying is something the person has to figure out on their own. That does not mean they should not have all the love and support they can get from loved ones. It should not be a solitary thing, but something that should be shared, celebrated, and the individual comforted by family and friends in their final days.

A few days ago, I had a dream that it was getting toward the end for me. It was a nice summer day, and I was with some friends in their backyard. People were laughing, swimming, drinking, playing good music — I even had a strawberry margarita by me. I was there but not participating actively. I was smiling, watching everybody enjoy themselves. Eventually I just drifted off and watched from above when they discovered I was gone. Although it was not expected that I would go that day, everyone was satisfied that that’s the way I would have wanted to go — in the midst of friends having a good time.

In the end, I don’t think dying “gracefully” is something anyone can define for someone else. Grace isn’t a performance, and it isn’t a standard to measure a person against when they’re facing the hardest moments of their life. If anything, grace shows up in the simple truth of continuing to live as honestly as you can, even when the road gets harder. Maybe grace is letting people love you without pretending. Maybe it’s allowing yourself to be human right up to the last breath. And maybe, just maybe, it’s trusting that when the time comes, you’ll drift off the way you did in my dream — surrounded by life, by laughter, by the people who made your days worth living — and that will be more than enough.