"British historian Tony Judt died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, in 2010. In an extraordinary interview with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air, Judt explained that with a severe condition like ALS, in which you're surrounded by equipment and health professionals, the danger isn't that you'll lash out and be mean. But, rather, it's that you'll disconnect from those you love. "It's that they lose a sense of your presence," he says, "that you stop being omnipresent in their lives." And so, he said, his responsibility to his family and friends was not to be unfailingly positive and "Pollyanna," which wouldn't be honest. "It's to be as present in their lives now as I can be so that in years to come they don't feel either guilty or bad at my having been left out of their lives, that they feel still a very strong ... memory of a complete family rather than a broken one." Asked"