ABSTRACT
As life would have it, while in the midst of writing this paper about termination, my 87-year-old father was told that he needed open-heart surgery. The doctors made it clear: If he did not have surgery, death would be imminent. The questions that I am asking in this paper have become the questions that I am living in my day-to-day interactions as my father prepares for surgery. What does it mean to live while knowing we will die? How do we go on in the face of loss of all kinds, loss of those we have loved, loss of those we have been closest to, loss of our health, loss of our former selves, loss of our analysts, loss of our patients, and perhaps most of all, how do we give up the illusion that we can control our lives?
