Dr. Marlaine Figueroa Gray advocates for a new, compassionate language around death, emphasizing the importance of legacy, personhood, and meaningful connections in the dying process.
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“Part of the experience of death is finding ways to accept what has happened, express what we are feeling, and find ways to move on. We, as adults, need to find ways to help our children to do this too.”
“Words matter. ‘By words we learn thoughts, and by thoughts we learn life.’ — Jean Baptiste Girard”
“Do you ever worry about your own death, feel that life is too short, or dread the day you will lose someone you care about? You are not alone.”
“Question: Are you able to face death with your friend or do you bail?”
“‘Don’t let the patient die’… is that the right thing or the wrong thing for a given patient? It is time for physicians to think that through more completely and allow, perhaps, a different answer.”
Death. Mortality. End of Life. Something inevitable, yet rarely discussed and a source of intense discomfort for most. When mentioned, it is considered inauspicious and rude in many cultures. Death is an integral part of the workday for a Critical Care Physician like me. But it was never a topic of discussion in Medical School or training.
The most touching moments are those when I get to witness a client’s surrender to the natural course of things … when the control and desperation subside and acceptance fills the void.
Not everyone gets Precious Time. It is a blessing if we recognize it for what it is, name it, and face it.
It’s time that we revise and refine our cultural lexicon around this emergent end-of-life practice. A medically assisted death definitively warrants a linguistic and conceptual category of its own.
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