Hi, this is Anna. I'm still out on maternity leave. I'm actually recording this in

a closet while June's out on a walk with Arthur. I'm in here because I wanted to

share something with you, a conversation that we recorded back in March. I talked

with the woman named Elizabeth Kaplan. She was all the way on the other side of the world in a studio in Canberra, Australia.

Are you wearing like a raincoat or something? There's something that's creaking.

I'm wearing a leather jacket, which I can take right off.

What color is the leather jacket?

Black.

Does it have like a lot of zippers on it?

A big zipper down the front.

Yep.

One of my other leather jackets has multiple zippers, but this is my simple one.

Elizabeth charmed me right off the bat.

She was funny, self-deprecating, thoughtful. Hers was one of the stories that you heard in our episode called

When I Almost Died. I spoke with listeners who shared their near-death experiences

and Elizabeth described her life as one big near death

experience. With stage four cancer the reality of it is you will probably die.

So it's kind of always been an awareness in the back of my mind that this is probably what would kill me.

What had started as colorectal cancer had spread to her liver and lungs.

She'd been writing about this in detail for about two years

on her blog called Sky Between Branches. Elizabeth died just a few weeks ago on July

12th.

...