Dying
Patients, healthcare workers, and recently bereaved family members often describe a "good death" in terms of effective choices made in a few areas:
- Assurance of effective pain and symptom management.
- Education about death and its aftermath, especially as it relates to decision-making.
- Completion of any significant goals, such as resolving past conflicts.
People who are terminally ill may not always follow recognizable stages of grief. For example, a person who finds strength in denial may never reach a point of acceptance or accommodation and may react negatively to any statement that threatens this defense mechanism. Other people find comfort in arranging their financial and legal affairs or planning their funerals.
Read more about this topic: Terminal Illness
Famous quotes containing the word dying:
“I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once more only the words Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,—those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcæus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When the shadow of death blots out my joy
And erases the face of the sun
Give me strength to endure, hope to believe
That living and dying are one.”
—William L. Wallace (20th century)
“To want fame is to prefer dying scorned than forgotten.”
—E.M. Cioran (b. 1911)