A call for frank conversation about the end of life

William Colby admits it won't be an easy talk to have, but he says we need to have it.

If we're incapacitated, if we're brain-dead, if we'll never again regain consciousness, and can't communicate our wishes to our doctors, what do we want them to do?

Colby is the lawyer who represented Nancy Cruzan, whose 1990 case before the U.S. Supreme Court firmly established the right to die in American jurisprudence.

Colby wrote about that case in his book "Long Goodbye: The Deaths of Nancy Cruzan." He is now out with a new book advising all of us to talk to our loved ones about death and dying, and those difficult questions about when we would want to be kept alive -- and when we wouldn't.

Colby spoke about his book on April 13 at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul.