Sometimes it starts with a diagnosis, and there is time to prepare. And sometimes it just happens. I’m almost the same age as my father was when he died, keeling over from heart disease — death was the first symptom.
Although he died relatively young, I’ve often wondered if this was perhaps a kinder, softer way, that he was spared a protracted, slow-motion medical demise geared to prolong a quality of life that he wouldn’t have wanted.
My mother-in-law, a fiercely independent woman who taught four generations of students who uniformly loved her, died on her 95th birthday no longer capable of self-care, no longer recognizing her own children. Both deaths were heart-wrenching in a different way.