Compassionate Death Telling in Sudden and Traumatic Deaths

Any death telling is certainly a difcult and challenging experience but the dif- culty is compounded in traumatic, sudden, and unexpected deaths. The reality that we will all die looms as an echoing voice throughout our human existence. In American culture, which prides itself on the exactness of language, the question that frequently arises is “if” I die as opposed to “when” I die. Death is not an optional event. It is something that all things living on this planet will experience at some point or another (Corr, 2000).