We Know how this ends … Living While Dying
We Know How This Ends is an invitation to look directly at mortality—and to discover what becomes possible when we do. Rooted in honest, searching conversations, it explores how awareness of an ending can sharpen attention, deepen relationships, and clarify what truly matters. Rather than offering answers or comfort clichés, the project asks readers and listeners to sit with uncertainty, to live more deliberately, and to recognize that meaning, connection, and even joy can grow alongside grief and loss.
This is a book about healing even if there is no cure, light even when there is darkness and meaningful living in the face of impending death.
Don’t be frightened. This is a mirror of your own life, you just might not realize it yet.
Deeply introspective, but with themes that all readers can relate to, We Know How This Ends: Living while Dying relates the physical, emotional and spiritual encounters of Bruce Kramer, a person living with Lou Gehrig’s disease or ALS. (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis)
In December 2010, the life Bruce knew was shattered after he was diagnosed with the mysterious disease where the motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord slowly die off, leaving a person unable to move, swallow, talk or breathe. Researchers now think ALS has ties to other, better known diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Muscular Dystrophy and Multiple Sclerosis.
As with the other motor neuron diseases, there is no cure for ALS and most people with it live two to five years before dying.
As Bruce’s disease progresses, his experiences, framed through the observations of journalist Cathy Wurzer, at first appear to be unique to him. But Bruce’s story is our story, and We Know How This Ends… helps readers prepare for what most of us fear most: dying, and in the process the book explores what it truly means to live.
Cathy Wurzer with Dr. Bruce Kramer
It Began With a Conversation
We Know How This Ends grew out of the deeply moving on-air conversations between journalist Cathy Wurzer and Dr. Bruce Kramer, recorded after Bruce was diagnosed with ALS. What began as a series of candid interviews—honest, searching, and often unexpectedly humorous—became an ongoing dialogue about mortality, meaning, love, and how to live fully in the face of decline.
Check out the Living With ALS series of interviews from Minnesota Public Radio News!