Mom with ALS living out her final-days bucket list ‘with joy’

Susan Spencer-Wendel knows she's dying.

The mother of three with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) recently completed her memoirs, "Until I Say Goodbye: My Year of Living with Joy," in which she describes her intentions to live out the rest of her life with purpose, intent and joy.

"I leave you, my children, the memories of all we enjoyed and discovered," she writes. "I leave this book. The one I worked on each day for most of our magical year. G-O-O-D-B-Y-E my loves."

The award-winning reporter typed the 89,000-word book on her iPhone with her right thumb, the only part of her body below her neck she can still move.

The book chronicles her life story — and the bucket-list adventures she's had since her 2011 diagnosis.

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She travelled to see the Northern Lights with her best friend. She celebrated her 20th anniversary with her husband in Budapest.

"My husband, John Wendel, and I came to Budapest in February to celebrate our 20-year wedding anniversary in the place where our life together began. For the first two years of our marriage, 1992 to 1994, we lived here. John received a grant from the Fulbright Commission to teach, and I helped start an English-language newspaper after the fall of Communism. Those years were hands-down two of the best years of our lives. So when I got sick and made my bucket list, Budapest topped it," Spencer-Wendel wrote in the Palm Beach Post last year.

"Nothing surprises me about her," her husband says. "I wouldn't have expected anything less from her. She's always set the bar really high.This book is what happens when you take someone who can't sit still and make them sit still."

The family swam with dolphins on her son Wesley's 9th birthday, and went to Sanibel Island in Florida with 10-year-old daughter Aubrey.

Spencer-Wendel even took her 14-year-old daughter, Marina, to try on wedding dresses at famed "Say Yes to the Dress" shop Kleinfeld's.

"I simply wanted to make a memory. I wanted to see my beautiful daughter on her wedding day. I wanted to glimpse the woman she will be,” Susan writes. “Maybe I would cry. Mothers cry, right? But I knew I would laugh, too. Because I would be with Marina. I would be imagining her happy."

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"The book’s message," Spencer-Wendel tells the Palm Beach Post, "is to live with joy. Set your intention and do it. And accept nature. No matter what happens to you…accept nature."

"I was speaking to my family and friends with my written words and I was reliving the moments. Meeting John. My children's births. The peace I embraced inside… Writing this book was not work. Like each journey I took during the year, it brought me joy. It kept me alive," she adds.

Universal bought the movie rights to the inspirational mom's book. A screenplay is currently being adapted, USA Today reports.