"Here it is. I'm dead, and this is my last post to my blog." Those are the first words of the final blog post written by Derek Miller at www.penmachine.com.

The second paragraph includes the blogger's autobiography in just two sentences: "I was born on June 30, 1969, in Vancouver, Canada, and I died in Burnaby on May 3, 2011, age 41, of complications from stage 4 metastatic colorectal cancer. We all knew this was coming." Miller had been battling the cancer for four years at the time of his death, and he asked a friend to post his final words on the blog that had become a public record of his struggle.

The style of Miller's entire blog is honest and open, and he paints the story of his final months with a boldness that is sometimes shocking, sometimes warm, sometimes funny, and sometimes deeply sad.

He asks his friends to bring him cans of Diet Cherry Coke and Easy Cheese, for example, adding: "And if you say that those are horrible food-like substances that will give me cancer, I will just laugh and laugh." He starts another post this way: "I'm at the point with my cancer that the car has finally bumped down off the pavement and we're driving on gravel now. What I mean is, the end of the road is somewhere up ahead, not too far."

Miller's final entry opens a window inside of a man who expects nothing to happen after he dies. "I haven't gone to a better place, or a worse one," he writes. "I haven't gone anyplace, because Derek doesn't exist anymore. As soon as my body stopped functioning, and the neurons in my brain ceased firing, I made a remarkable transformation: from a living organism to a corpse, like a flower or a mouse that didn't make it through a particularly frosty night."

His final words were for his wife: "I loved you deeply, I loved you, I loved you, I loved you."

Derek Miller's story is not exceptional because he was more aware of his oncoming death than others, nor is it unique because of his willingness to talk about it. No, what is distinctive about his words is that they are written for every person who ever lived or will live.

Whether or not friends will post it tomorrow or in 50 years, we can all write our final blog post. We all know this is coming.