It is the great inevitability of life, an inevitability that we spend billions of dollars trying to avoid every year. Some of us even make the very purpose of our lives a quest for physical immortality which places us in a quandary, a quandary where we resist death to such a degree that we inhibit ourselves from really living.
Many of us do not actually sit with death and try to understand it until it has caught up with us and we can no longer avoid it. Most of us never ask who it is that lives and dies. As a result, we have forgotten how to die well without suffering. We have also forgotten how to aid people with the transition into death.
On average, Medicare pays $50 billion per year just for doctor and hospital bills during the last two months of patients’ lives, which is more than the entire budget of the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Education