ABSTRACT
Stories come to us from other times and places depicting death as a dramatic moment. Loved ones are gathered at the bedside and the poignant business of settling one’s affairs and saying goodbyes is carried out with awesome dignity. A kind of winsome honesty is evident in Kübler-Ross’s account of the death of a farmer [1] or the Asian custom of relatives gathering at the bedside of the dying patient two or more days before death is expected, “openly indicating to the patient that they are there to keep him company during his passage out of life” [2]. Granting a measure of romanticizing and a glossing over of unpleasant aspects in these reports, this manner of dying seems infinitely preferable to the impersonal, technological fate we can expect to face.
