Nearly every day, Beverly Leo listens to the music she wants played at her memorial service. She puts the CD of six songs on repeat, the volume loud enough so she can hear it over the hiss and rattle of her oxygen tank.

After a while, the songs meld together and fade -another background noise friends and family talk over when they visit. But the music seeps in. The sounds become a part of Leo, a different voice she can speak through when her own voice is gone.

After a while, the songs meld together and fade -another background noise friends and family talk over when they visit. But the music seeps in. The sounds become a part of Leo, a different voice she can speak through when her own voice is gone.

Leo, 61, is dying of a rare lung disease that has slowly taken away her control of her life. She needs help to bathe, to read and, sometimes, to get out of bed. Planning her memorial service helps her fill the days at Pleasant View Center, a nursing home on Pleasant Street. It also allows her to steep in her past and create some kind of plan for the future.

Courtesy photo Beverly Leo poses for a portrait during her 1966-1969 Peace Corps service in Nepal. Zoom

"It's just kind of another thing I can point to and focus on," she said. "It's kind of weird because it's a final thing, and I really won't be there for the execution of it. But it doesn't really matter because, with me, it's always been the planning and the doing."

Leo, formerly the head of Concord's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, has allowed the Monitor to chronicle her death in a series of articles. Leo hopes her story will raise awareness about her disease and help others who must deal with end-of-life issues.

Leo began preparing herself for her death 12 years ago, when she was diagnosed with lymphangiomyomatosis, a disease that causes smooth muscle to grow over lung tissue, blocking the passage of oxygen. The disease affects only women; about 8,000 in the United States have the disease, according to the National Institutes of Health.

But it wasn't until July, when she was too short of breath to walk up the five stairs to her Bradford home, that Leo knew her life was ending.

LORI DUFF / Monitor Staff Beverly Leo works on her knitting in her room at Pleasant View. Her eyesight has been affected by medication so she uses a lighted magnifier to help her see. Zoom Purchase Photos Online

She and her family were used to the idea that she was sick. But dying was something new, something unknown. Leo's sons, Alan, 30, and Ben, 27, had watched Leo ride her horses through most of her illness by wearing an oxygen tank in a backpack; they struggled to understand their mother's weakening condition and vulnerabilities.

When they first visited her at Pleasant View, they took turns pushing her around the grounds in her wheelchair, Leo said. Alan started pushing her quickly, jumping on the back of her chair. Leo hollered for him to stop.

"He goes, 'Mom, you used to gallop horses down hills,'" Leo said. "I said, 'Yeah. And that's when I had control in my life. And I could control the horse.

"I said, 'You don't know what it's like to be out of control. I cannot do anything without depending on somebody. That's a different situation. Don't rush me down this hill.'He said, 'Oh Mom, I'm so sorry.'"

Leo finished writing her will a while ago, but she's still finishing plans for her memorial service. And she always beginning a new project.

She finished a coat and hat she thought might be her last crocheted projects. But now, she's crocheting a small wind horse, a mythical figure prevalent on Tibetan prayer flags. The horse, which carries three jewels representing Buddhist wisdom and enlightenment, combines the strength of a horse and the wind to carry prayers to heaven.

'Bev's spirituals'

Leo first heard singer Norah Jones during an MRI, when medical technicians played music during the procedure. Sometimes, when she wakes up and can't place where she is or why she's not at home, she reaches for her headphones.

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