The answer is “Feeling Mortal”, the title song and opening track of the album Kris Kristofferson released in January 2013 at age 76. On it, Kris Kristofferson looked plainly at growing old. Around the same time, doctors were telling him that his fading memory meant Alzheimer’s disease, and it took years to learn they were wrong.
Three Days in the Studio
By 2013, Kris Kristofferson had already lived several lives. He had been a Rhodes Scholar, an Army helicopter pilot, a janitor at a Nashville studio, a songwriter whose songs were recorded by Johnny Cash and Janis Joplin, and a Hollywood star. When he went back into the studio, he kept things simple.
Working with producer Don Was, Kris Kristofferson recorded about 20 songs in just three days. Ten of them became Feeling Mortal, released on his own KK Records label. The album was stripped down and acoustic, built around his weathered voice. The title song opened the record and set its tone: an old man looking back without self-pity, taking stock of what he had and what he had left.
A Man at Peace With Getting Old
When NPR asked him about the album and becoming aware of mortality, Kris Kristofferson laughed and gave an answer few people expected:
“It’s a lot more pleasant than I thought it would be.”
He also admitted he was growing grayer and more forgetful. To many fans the album looked like a graceful farewell. But something else was going on behind the scenes.
The Diagnosis That Didn’t Fit
For years, Kris Kristofferson’s memory problems had been getting worse. Doctors blamed them on Alzheimer’s disease, or on dementia from the blows to the head he took in his boxing and football days. He was put on Alzheimer’s medication and stayed on it for about three years.
His wife, Lisa Kristofferson, never fully accepted that explanation. She had been at his side since the early 1980s, and something about the diagnosis felt wrong to her. Later tests, including a spinal tap and an MRI, did not support Alzheimer’s, so the question stayed open: if it wasn’t Alzheimer’s, what was it?
A Tick on a Forest Floor
In early 2016, Kris Kristofferson was finally tested for Lyme disease, a tick-borne illness. The result came back positive.
Lisa Kristofferson believed she knew where it had started. In 2006, he filmed the movie Disappearances in rural Vermont and spent much of the shoot lying on the forest floor. She suspected a deer tick had bitten him there. If she was right, the illness had gone undiagnosed for about ten years.
Kris Kristofferson stopped taking the Alzheimer’s and depression medication and went through three weeks of treatment for Lyme disease. His family saw a change they had almost given up hoping for. Lisa Kristofferson told Rolling Stone:
“All of a sudden he was back.”
A Song That Reads Differently Now
Knowing all this changes how “Feeling Mortal” sounds today. When Kris Kristofferson recorded it, he sounded like a man who thought he was near the end and had made peace with it. In fact, the end was still more than a decade away.
The memory loss that worried his family turned out to be treatable. Kris Kristofferson went on living, playing music and spending time with his family for years after the correct diagnosis.
The Final Verse
Kris Kristofferson died at home in Maui on September 28, 2024, at age 88, surrounded by his family. He had written about mortality with honesty and humor, and in the end he got more time than he had expected when he recorded “Feeling Mortal.” Part of the reason was that Lisa Kristofferson kept asking questions when the first answer didn’t seem right.