you fight your terminal diagnosis with the chemo and positive thinking and the rest, and you end up realizing that you’ve been dying all along—if you end up realizing that a dying person is what you have become—it means one thing: that you lost. That is the gray secret of your end-times: Fight your executioner to your heart’s content if you will, but he will no less be your executioner. You might change how you feel about him, but if you fight him you will not change his job description. In
