ABSTRACT
Four images of death stay fresh in my mind. The first is that of an old friend who died at the age of sixty-one of cancer of the liver. He knew at least two months beforehand he was going to die, as did his family and friends. During that time he received a constant stream of visitors. They knew and he knew they were taking their leave. He was a model of gaiety and hospitality; it is hard to imagine how any dying person could have put people more at ease. When his time came, his family and many of those friends were at his bedside in his home, not in a hospital. Without any significant pain, he slipped into a coma some six hours before he died. Until then he was fully lucid. I arrived ten minutes after his death. I wept, as did everyone else there, but I could not feel that his death was "untimely"; one could only hope to die with equal grace, encircled by one's friends and family.
