Dying will touch all of us.

It is an intimate and inevitable experience for us all…no matter how many people have touched our lives.

And don’t we all want a compassionate, peaceful and gentle death?

Yes, each of us wants to die well!

With that in mind and given the opportunity, we can choose to be with the dying and use tolerance, kindness, warmth, openness, compassion, humor (and more) to help the dying die well…and hope one day the same will be done for us.

We can bear witness to one of the most natural events of living…and in the process think about our own ending.

Activities that any compassionate stranger, caregiver, friend or relative might do for one who is suffering and dying range from sitting in ease and silence for long periods with a dying person, giving a sponge bath or foot rub to alleviate discomfort, to entering the questions around dying that many people are fearful of asking or exploring.

Do you have an experience you’d like to share?

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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