Remember that smash film Got To Believe In Magic with Rico Yan and Claudine Barreto?, Rico Yan’s character initially had trouble thinking he’d get old. I ‘m somewhat similar because I can’t imagine being old.
In some ways there is that thought of dying til you can no longer enjoy life. I don’t know. I salute Terry Pratchett’s courage in admitting to this arrangement.

Coming to terms with the final chapter

February 12, 2010
Fantasy author Terry Pratchett mulls over life and how to leave it, writes Sacha Molitorisz.
Terry Pratchett … ‘‘I’ll write in the coffin, too.
As in a well-plotted fantasy novel, life is full of surprises. Until recently, Sir Terry Pratchett was one of Britain’s best-selling authors, a comic fantasist best known for his Discworld series.
Two years ago, he announced he has early onset Alzheimer’s. Now, at 61, Pratchett has courted controversy by admitting he wants to choose when he dies.
”I have no desire to pop my clogs in the next few years,” he says from his home.
”But I don’t particularly want to spend a lot of time in bed being fed through a tube. That’s what my father said, too. He didn’t want to die that way but then he had to.”
Pratchett presented his argument for assisted suicide last week, while delivering a lecture for the BBC, saying: ”I would like to die peacefully before the disease takes me over.
”If I knew that I could die at any time I wanted then suddenly every day would be as precious as a million pounds. If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.”
They were dignified, considered words. Even so, Pratchett expected all hell to break loose. To his surprise, it didn’t. ”Some archbishops have said nasty things but I look on that as a plus,” he says, lucidly and softly.
”Apart from that, not a single person has thumbed their nose at me. People are saying, ‘How can we join in?
”The baby boomers see how their grandmothers and grandfathers died, and they’re looking after their mums and dads, and they think, ‘Bugger this, who said it has to be like this?”’
via Coming to terms with the final chapter – Books – Entertainment – smh.com.au.