"If I Am Spared"

Christopher Hitchens writes of his transition from a healthy man to a dying man with grace and clarity.

He holds out the possibility of more writing, but can't even promise that:

Against me is the blind, emotionless alien, cheered on by some who have long wished me ill. But on the side of my continued life is a group of brilliant and selfless physicians plus an astonishing number of prayer groups. On both of these I hope to write next time if—as my father invariably said—I am spared.

His father, by coincidence, died of the same esophageal cancer that Hitchens now struggles against.