KRIS KRISTOFFERSON MADE AN ALBUM ABOUT DYING AT 76. THREE YEARS LATER HE LEARNED THE DOCTORS HAD BEEN WRONG ABOUT HIM THE WHOLE TIME. In January 2013, Kris Kristofferson released an album called Feeling Mortal. He was 76. He and producer Don Was cut twenty songs in three days and kept ten. The title song is an old man looking at his own face in the mirror, wide awake, counting what time is left. What the listeners didn’t know was why he was writing that way. For years his doctors had told him he had Alzheimer’s, or dementia from all the boxing and football of his younger days. His memory was going. His wife Lisa later said there were stretches when he couldn’t hold on to what he had just done a minute before. He was singing about the end because he had been told he was already in it. Then in February 2016, Lisa took him to a different doctor, who looked at the muscles twitching in his forearms and ordered a blood test. It came back positive for Lyme disease — a tick-borne illness the family believes he had carried for decades. It was never Alzheimer’s. Within three weeks of proper treatment, Lisa said her husband started coming back to her. Kris Kristofferson died at home on Maui on September 28, 2024, at 88 — eleven years after he made the record he thought was his goodbye.

Kris Kristofferson’s Album About Mortality, and the Truth That Came Later

In January 2013, Kris Kristofferson released Feeling Mortal, an album that sounded like a man standing very close to the edge and speaking calmly about what he saw. At 76, Kris Kristofferson had cut twenty songs in three days with producer Don Was and kept ten for the final record. The title track was not subtle. It sounded like a man looking at himself honestly, measuring the distance between the present moment and whatever came next.

For listeners, the album felt like a late-career reflection from a seasoned artist who had spent a lifetime writing with grit and grace. But there was another layer behind it. For years, Kris Kristofferson had been told by doctors that his memory problems were caused by Alzheimer’s disease or by damage from the boxing and football of his younger years. The diagnosis shaped the way his family understood what was happening to him. Lisa Kristofferson later described long stretches when he could not hold onto what had happened only a minute before.

That made the songs on Feeling Mortal feel even heavier in hindsight. They were not just about age. They were about uncertainty, fear, and the strange dignity of continuing to sing while the ground beneath you seems to be moving.

The Diagnosis That Changed the Story

Then, in February 2016, Lisa Kristofferson took Kris Kristofferson to another doctor. This time, someone looked more closely at the twitching muscles in Kris Kristofferson’s forearms and ordered a blood test. The result was positive for Lyme disease, a tick-borne illness that the family believed he had carried for decades. According to reporting at the time, this meant the earlier Alzheimer’s explanation had been wrong.

It was a stunning turn for a family that had already spent years preparing for decline. Lisa Kristofferson said that within three weeks of proper treatment, Kris Kristofferson began coming back to her. For loved ones, that change must have felt both joyful and heartbreaking: joyful because a familiar person was reappearing, heartbreaking because so much time had been lost to the wrong explanation.

That story gives Feeling Mortal a different shape. It is still an album about aging, but it is also an accidental record of misread symptoms, fear, and endurance. Kris Kristofferson was singing about the end while believing he had already been told he was there. In reality, the final chapter was not yet written.

A Farewell That Was Not a Farewell

Kris Kristofferson died at home on Maui on September 28, 2024, at the age of 88. By then, the album he had once seemed to use as a goodbye was no longer a farewell at all. It had become something more complicated: a snapshot of a gifted artist thinking honestly about mortality, even while the medical truth behind his condition was still hidden.

That is what makes the story linger. Kris Kristofferson did not stop being himself because the wrong diagnosis had once followed him. He kept working, kept reflecting, and kept making art that met life without flinching. In the end, Feeling Mortal was not just an album about dying. It was also proof that even in confusion, Kris Kristofferson was still reaching for the truth.

KRIS KRISTOFFERSON MADE AN ALBUM ABOUT DYING AT 76. THREE YEARS LATER HE LEARNED THE DOCTORS HAD BEEN WRONG ABOUT HIM THE WHOLE TIME. In January 2013, Kris Kristofferson released an album called Feeling Mortal. He was 76. He and producer Don Was cut twenty songs in three days and kept ten. The title song is an old man looking at his own face in the mirror, wide awake, counting what time is left. What the listeners didn’t know was why he was writing that way. For years his doctors had told him he had Alzheimer’s, or dementia from all the boxing and football of his younger days. His memory was going. His wife Lisa later said there were stretches when he couldn’t hold on to what he had just done a minute before. He was singing about the end because he had been told he was already in it. Then in February 2016, Lisa took him to a different doctor, who looked at the muscles twitching in his forearms and ordered a blood test. It came back positive for Lyme disease — a tick-borne illness the family believes he had carried for decades. It was never Alzheimer’s. Within three weeks of proper treatment, Lisa said her husband started coming back to her. Kris Kristofferson died at home on Maui on September 28, 2024, at 88 — eleven years after he made the record he thought was his goodbye.

JOEY FEEK SANG ABOUT LEAVING HER HUSBAND BEHIND. FOUR YEARS LATER, THE MUSIC VIDEO THEY MADE BECAME THEIR REAL LIFE. On May 17, 2012, Joey + Rory filmed the video for “When I’m Gone” on their Tennessee farm. Joey sang from the point of view of a woman preparing the man she loved for life after her death. In the video, Rory was left alone in their farmhouse while Joey was imagined buried beneath the sassafras trees in their backfield. At the time, neither of them knew how painfully real those scenes would become. Joey was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2014. After the disease returned and became terminal, she died on March 4, 2016, at just 40 years old. Rory went home without his wife — though this time, he had their little daughter Indiana beside him. Years later, Rory looked back at that old video and wrote that three and a half years after they filmed it, “that video would come true.” What had once been acting was now his life. And Joey’s voice was still there, telling him he would somehow be alright when she was gone.

HE WAS TOO SICK TO STAND. THEN JESSI COLTER WALKED OUT — AND WAYLON SANG HIS LAST FULL CONCERT FROM A CHAIR. January 6, 2000. The Ryman Auditorium. Waylon Jennings was 62, and his health was already failing badly enough that he could no longer stand through a full show. He sat on a chair and addressed it before anyone else could. “I guess y’all noticed I’m sittin’ on this chair, and that ain’t all old age,” he told the crowd. His back and legs were hurting. Then came the old Waylon defiance: “Y’all don’t worry about me. I can still kick ass.” And he did. John Anderson, Montgomery Gentry and Travis Tritt joined him that night. But the most personal stretch came when his wife, Jessi Colter, walked out. They shared four songs — “Love’s the Only Chain,” “I’m Not Lisa,” “Storms Never Last,” and “Suspicious Minds.” “Storms Never Last” carried a different weight now. Jessi had written it years earlier, and the two had sung it together long before Waylon’s body began failing him. That night, they sang it together again. Waylon never performed another full concert. Two years later, he was gone.

JOHNNY CASH SANG ABOUT “SEPTEMBER” WITH HIS DAUGHTER. 171 DAYS AFTER THE SONG WAS RELEASED, SEPTEMBER CAME — AND HE WAS GONE. Rosanne Cash had written “September When It Comes” years earlier, a song about growing older, letting go and finally finding rest. When she recorded it for her 2003 album Rules of Travel, her father joined her. Johnny Cash was already frail. In his verse, he sang about a man who could no longer move mountains or run the way he once had. Then came the image of being carried to a place where he could rest. The song was released on March 25, 2003. Less than two months later, Johnny lost his wife of 35 years, June Carter Cash. He kept going for a little while longer. Then, on September 12, Johnny Cash died at 71. The song had been out for 171 days. Rosanne had called it “September When It Comes.” For her father, September really did come.