I felt compelled to transcribe a segment of one of Hitch's last interview's when he was asked about death. As always, it was a calculated and brilliant answer.

One can’t live without fear. It’s a question, ‘what is your attitude towards fear?’

I’m afraid of a sordid death, I’m afraid that I would die in an ugly or squalid way. Cancer can be very pitiless in that.

(Interviewer: That’s a fear of DYING, not death?)

Quite. So I forget now what you ask…it’s a good distinction. Of death no, of dying, yes…I feel a sense of waste about it because I’m not ready. I feel a sense of betrayal to my family and I’d like to think to even some of my friends who would miss me. Undone things, unattained objectives, but as I said before, I’d always have that as if I were 100.

(Interviewer: Does it make you angry?)

No, it makes me sober, objective. I think, well, this is the best known of our disease enemies. I’m one of its many many victims, I’m probably one of the lucky ones in point of being able to have treatment and care. I’d like to prove to other people that it’s not the end of everything to be diagnosed with it. In other words, yes it can be resisted. I think I prefer resistance to battling. I didn’t pick this fight but now I’m in it, I’d like to give it my best shot. And as I say, what this means to me is putting myself on the side those men of medicine, and science, and reason who are trying to reduce it to something that is understandable, sailable to reason and that will be brought under control.

(Interviewer: But the likelihood is that it will kill you…)

Well the certainty is that is what I will die from, some people die with cancer. I might die with it. Unless I have a heart attack, which I could easily have, by the way, but I’m much more likely now to have a blood clot than I was before… Or a stroke perhaps. But I mean no, it’s the proximate reason for my death and I am both lucky and unlucky to know it in advance and be able to take its measure.