Death: a rewarding experience?

eah, right! But that is the central thesis of 3 books published within the past 2 years on the care of the dying. It is also the main idea in a major work by Buddhist teacher Sogyal Rinpoche and in the most recent book by Scott Peck. Is it wishful thinking, an overdose of the warm fuzzies, blatant denial? Or is there something here that we have all been missing? To take the Buddhist point of view first, Sogyal Rinpoche says that the denial is all ours in the West and that we also have heavy doses of wishful thinking when it comes to death and to life. He starts with the point of view that we should first fully accept that our own death is certain. The only uncertainties are when and how. And the more we can fully accept the certainty of our own death, the less our worries about when and how will have the power to control us. What flows from this is a wider and longer perspective on life — greater openness to change and a greater desire to contribute to events and people outside ourselves. Investing purely in our own narrow identities loses its attraction when we realize that we really do have built-in obsolescence. It was presumably to remind themselves of this salient fact that the monks referred to in James Joyce’s “The Dead” regularly slept in their own coffins. Rinpoche also says that this acceptance changes our general attitude toward our own death and other people’s. We stop denying it or hoping we will somehow scrape through when the time comes and start doing something to prepare ourselves — a kind of pre-emptive spirituality. Scott Peck, a physician and psychiatrist, sees the same truth from a Christian and Western perspective. He believes that facing the emotional pain of our own death and the fact that we are all in a sense “dying” initiates a necessary and healthy grieving process for our current and anticipated losses. In doing this grieving we do suffer, but we also grow and become more free emotionally and spiritually. We also stop running away from other people who are dying and start doing what we can to help and support them. Ira Byock, Michael Kearney and Christine Longaker, each in slightly different ways, show how rewarding this helping and support can be, for both the dying person and the helper. Byock begins with his father Sy’s death. Sy died with courage and dignity at the age of 62, which gave Ira a precious gift — his life’s work. In a series of stories he tells of the rewards of dying well. What is extraordinary is that this does not fit the conventional myth of what successful palliative care looks like. Take, for example, Byock’s story of Terry Matthews, a 31year-old mother of 3 young children who has metastatic