“Live Like You Were Dying,” Recorded by Tim McGraw

A woman battling a brain tumor once told me, “It’s not that you should live each day as if it’s your last. You should live each day as if it’s your ONLY.”

The songwriters of “Live Like You Were Dying” understood the sentiment.

In 2004, Craig Wiseman and Tim Nichols were talking about a 40-year-old friend who had gotten an alarming diagnosis. He was totally freaked out. Turns out that the diagnosis was a mistake, and he was in no danger at all, but it changed the way he thought about living.

The conversation about their friend got them thinking about people who had gotten a difficult diagnosis and then responded with energy and enthusiasm for the time they had left. Craig Wiseman and Tim Nichols were two songwriters who had worked together in the past. When Wiseman muttered the phrase, “live like you were dying,” Tim Nichols said, “Yeah, that!”

Soon, the duo was brainstorming ideas about people who react in a positive way rather than in a negative way. Their ideas were based in part on a story they had heard about a woman diagnosed with cancer who decided to do something she’d always wanted to do: go climb mountains in the Rockies. Craig thought of his uncle who found out he had leukemia and decided to retire and start shark diving.

The lyrics started to flow:

 I was in my early 40s,
With a lot of life before me
And a moment came that stopped me on a dime.
I spent most of the next days
Looking at the x-rays
Talkin’ ’bout the options
And talkin’ ’bout sweet time.
I asked him
When it sank in
That this might really be the real end
“How’s it hit you
When you get that kind of news?
Man, what’d you do?”

As soon as the demo for “Live Like You Were Dying” was made, people started responding. The song and the lyrics resonated with Tim McGraw because it suggested the life of Tug McGraw, a professional baseball player, and Tim’s father. Nine months after his initial diagnosis of a brain tumor, Tug McGraw died on January 5, 2004.

Credit: Taste of Country

Tim McGraw says, “Of course, the song is special to me, but I think it is special to a lot of people. The song to me is not about death. It’s an affirmation of life.”

The words resonated with people everywhere because they affirmed that even in the face of death, we can be better people:

I was finally the husband
That most of the time I wasn’t
And I became a friend a friend would like to have
And all of a sudden going fishin’
Wasn’t such an imposition
And I went three times that year I lost my dad…

And then

I went skydiving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fumanchu
And I loved deeper
And I spoke sweeter
And I gave forgiveness I’d been denying.
And he said
“Someday I hope you get the chance
To live like you were dying.”

“Live Like You Were Dying” sold more than 2 million copies in the United States. It was on the top of the Billboard Country Music for seven weeks and honored with the Country Music’s Association Single of the Year and the Song of the year for 2004. It won two Grammys in 2005 for Best Country Song and Best Country Male Vocalist.

The song is a mantra for those who want to live well while they still have time.