I am thinking back about my neighbour who died about 20 years ago of lung cancer. We talked about a lot of things as we were friends. We saw each other every day but he never told me he had lung cancer, not even on the day that I visited him in the hospital. I had to find out that he had lung cancer from his wife.
My neighbour only told me: "Gosh yesterday night was a tricky night, they almost got me, and how are you?". Very lucid but also on oxygen and a few minutes later he went back to sleep. I sat there a few hours more but he didn’t wake up anymore that day.
Then his children came in, and at that time I already felt that in these last moments you want your loved ones closer than your friends.
But that still doesn’t answer the question: why did he never say he had lung cancer? He quit smoking a few months before when he went to a doctor, and then he said: "smoking is really bad you know". Same day he taught his wife how to operate the lawnmower, "just in case one day I won’t be able to do it, then she knows how to do it"…