When is it a good time to die? My best friend of over 40 years is dying. She is 56 years old, and although that might seem old to many of you, I assure you that the 56-year old life is still young and vital, and still holds value and opportunity. So what is the big deal? People die every day for all kinds of reasons, and at all ages. So when is it acceptable for someone to die? Perhaps when someone is very sick, or very old, or in a lot of emotional, mental or physical pain or anguish?
    I guess the real answer lies not only with the dying, but as well with those who will live on after the person’s death. What if I were to change the question from “When is it acceptable for someone to die?” to ‘When is it acceptable for someone you love to die?” Does your answer now change? All of a sudden, no matter how much pain your loved one is in, although you want their pain to stop, you still don't want them to die. It seems perverse to even have to make that kind of judgment or choice. "I want my mom to die, so her suffering will cease." Why did she have to suffer in the first place? I would not want her to die if she were healthy. My husband's mother died at 102. You may think, “Hey, sure, it was about time - she lived a long life.” For my husband, however, his relationship with his mom was the longest one he has ever had.
    In my many years as a grief counsellor, working on the oncology and palliative care wards of four major Montreal hospitals, at the bedsides of the dying, and as a life-long griever myself, I can honestly say that there is never a good time for someone you love to be permanently taken away from you. You may believe in an afterlife or reincarnation, or the spirit world, but in the physically-tangible here and now, the longing to hear and see and touch the person you love, who has died, is gut-wrenchingly palpable, and their absence can be physically and emotionally painful to those left behind.
    I have been through it with my dad, when I was 16, and with my mom when I was 34, and now my best friend, my chosen sister, my longest life relationship, will cease to exist in the not-too-distant future.We humans are the only animal that has an understanding of our own mortality. We witness loved ones close to us, and strangers around our earth, dying every day. We know beyond a doubt, that one day, we too will die, but we hope it is not today, because today is not a good time for us to die. So we get up in the morning, work, play, dream, plan, and keep moving ever forward towards the unknown future. We are resilient and adaptable and hopeful. We are able to experience more than one emotion at a time, and in the face of despair, we search relentlessly for happiness, joy, love, purpose and acceptance. We come together in difficult and fearful times, and we separate again when we feel more confident and safe. We all love, and therefore, we all grieve, collectively and separately.
   So my beloved friend is dying, and there is nothing I, or anyone else can do to stop that trajectory. It is not fair. It is cruel and out of the order of nature for her elderly parents to have to witness the death of their child. It is too soon for her two young-adult children to have to lose their mother. It is inconvenient to the egos of her oncologists to have to admit defeat. It is an affront for me to lose the one person left in my life who holds the memories of my history. Death is not fair. Death is impersonal, with no consideration as to age, gender, geography, financial status, education, etc. Death is extremely personal, and may shatter everything we once believed and trusted in, until everything around us, including ourselves, once familiar, is now unrecognizable. 
    When someone we love dies, it is not only about the person her/him self, but about all they represent to us. Each of us grieves for that same person for many different reasons. Each of our reasons is valid and understandable. We come together united in our grief about the one special person who meant so many different things. Edna St. Vincent Millay expressed this eloquently when she wrote:

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied   
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!   
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;   
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,   
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;   
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.   
There are a hundred places where I fear   
To go,—so with his memory they brim.   
And entering with relief some quiet place   
Where never fell his foot or shone his face   
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”   
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

   So, when is it a good time to die? The answer is subjective and personal and answered by both the dying and by the living. That's just this life-long griever’s opinion.

From Letters to the Editor, New York Times Book Review – February 28, 2016
 
To the Editor:

Re Andrew Solomon’s review of “When Breath Becomes Air” and four other books about death and dying (Feb. 14): Besides comfort and dignity, we need to openly discuss imbuing the impending death of a loved one with meaning. This is a considered trilateral conversation between a patient, their loved ones and clinicians. Except for palliative care teams, the health care professionals entrusted to shepherd most of us to our deaths require better training. Poetry and engagement with the humanities not only enhance a doctor’s empathy, but are requisite to all of us living meaningfully.
I have attended severely injured accident victims. Some die at the roadside before they get to the hospital. Breaking the news of a failed resuscitation can be heartbreaking for a child’s parents. Kafka’s “The meaning of life is that it stops” remains scant consolation when life is robbed unexpectedly or prematurely. I believe that dying at an old and infirm age is not something to be raged against or resisted at all cost. For all of us and every day, life ebbs away at a varied pace. Some race into the abyss of oblivion, and even the healthy are inching toward the precipice. Alastair Reid’s “Curiosity” offers a truthful rebuttal to Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night”: “That dying is what the living do, / that dying is what the loving do, / . . . that dying is what, to live, each has to do.”
JOSEPH TING
BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA
The writer is an adjunct associate professor in the school of public health and social work at Queensland University of Technology.

When a child experiences a loss, the devastation to that child’s life can be likened to an earthquake. All of a sudden, the child’s emotional landscape is devastated, and the familiar life which she/he had been leading, has changed forever. Although there are many losses which can be considered life-altering and traumatic (divorce, loss of residence, displacement from country, etc.), death is, as Elisabeth Kubler-Ross has stated, the most permanent and profound loss a human being faces.

In a classroom setting, the devastation being experienced by a student coming to terms with the death of a family member or peer, can have overwhelming repercussions, for the student, the rest of the class, and for the teachers. It is important for teachers to understand that, after a death has occurred, there are other losses to consider besides the immediately significant loss. As with the aftershocks from an earthquake, secondary losses can be just as devastating to a student, and affect his/her performance academically, socially, emotionally, and even physically, for years to come.

A child trying to come to terms with the permanence of the death of a loved one or peer may experience many emotions, the outward expression of which is not considered acceptable or desirable in a school setting. A child’s world is very much dependent upon others making decisions for him/her. Without any social, political, financial powers of their own, children are at the mercy of their elders. When a child’s emotional anchors have been pulled up, he/she has not yet acquired the adequate skills with which to cope and adjust. In subsequent posts, I will elaborate on how educators can play a vital role in implementing death education in the classroom.
 

It is important to understand that a grief counsellor is different from a social worker, psychologist, psychotherapist, or any other type of counsellor or therapist. A grief counsellor specializes in – and has devoted years of study and training to - thanatology, which is the intensive study of loss, grief, bereavement, mourning, death, dying, and palliative care.

Grief affects different people in different ways, and the grief journey is a highly personal one. Some individuals are unable to address their grief, for such reasons as the stresses and pressures of life, health issues, denial, and trauma. This phenomenon of being stuck in grief is called being frozen, and the feelings of loss, depression, and emptiness can become debilitating. The unaddressed intense emotional pain caused by the death of a loved one can manifest itself as an underlying cause of physical and mental health problems, both immediate and future. 

For those living with issues due to unaddressed grief, emotional, physical, and mental health problems may manifest weeks, months, even decades later. Very often the grief-stricken individual does not connect what they are experiencing with their past, unattended-to grief. 

However, if they do make the connection, it is very likely that they have been regularly subjected to the all-too-common mantra, “But you should be over it by now...” proffered by well-meaning, but ill-informed friends and relatives, who cannot possibly understand their personal grief journey.

So, if you are stuck in a place of grief, unable to move forward in your life, a grief counsellor can help you come to terms with such issues as trauma, compound, complicated, and disenfranchised grief. A qualified grief professional will never counsel you to ‘let go’, or to ‘get over’ your grief, or to have 'closure.'

A qualified grief professional will help you move forward with your life by facilitating healthy, proactive, portable coping strategies and normalizing triggers, in order for you to get back to a healthy and meaningful life.