After his inoperable brain cancer was diagnosed, Eugene O'Kelly, the 53-year-old CEO of a major accounting firm, wrote a guidebook on how to die. His book, Chasing Daylight, was written by a man once described as a "controlling, orderly, privileged, and powerful man who sometimes felt like an eagle on a mountaintop—then, to his astonishment, the mountain disappeared." In the final months of his life O'Kelly wrote:

What if I hadn't worked so hard? What if, aside from doing my job and doing it well, I had actually used the bully pulpit of my position to be a role model for balance? Had I done so intentionally, who's to say that, besides having more time with my family, I wouldn't also have been even more focused at work? More creative? More productive?

Mr. O'Kelly died shortly after writing those words, before he could answer his own question.