Experts on Aging, Dying as They Lived - The New York Times

Experts on Aging, Dying as They Lived - The New York Times

To the small extent that we have any choice in this uncertain life, it is wise to face your own death. In a world where so many of our fellow human beings live with threats of terror and destruction, if you are lucky enough to imagine you might have any measure of control over how you die, that is a privilege that should not go to waste. Our deaths are the last message we leave for those we love. How my parents died — in comfort — was the way they cared for me after they were gone. I was not ready to lose them in my 20s, but they had prepared and so I was protected. Their legacy to me was not a given. The illnesses that took them were outcomes that our past selves would have labeled catastrophic, worst-case scenarios. And yet for me these worst-case scenarios, though painful memories, are dwarfed by a much larger story: how my parents lived, how they died and how gracefully they did them both.