HOW do you tell your father, with an active lust for life, that he will soon die? How do you make the most of what little time he has left, yet give yourself enough time out from the burdens of care?

While tending to her dying dad, Ms Dawn Kor, 35, dealt with these issues by thinking aloud online. Her cathartic blog has been adapted into a caregivers booklet titled Life Before Death.

It was launched on Thursday by the Lien Foundation and will be distributed free at hospices and hospitals islandwide soon.

Her virtual entries interspersed with practical tips- from how to broach death to coping strategies can be found at www.lifebeforedeath.sg.

They were written between August 2006 - when Ms Kor, an only child, learnt that her father's pancreatic cancer was incurable - and February last year, about a month after he died.

Blogging helped the business development manager sort out her tangled web of emotions - fear, guilt, anger and love.

'It helped me articulate and make sense of my feelings,' said the soft-spoken, thoughtful woman.

Read the full story in Friday's edition of The Straits Times.