How We Think (Or Don't Think) About Death
By Karen M. Stensrud
There's good reason most of us avoid talking about dying, often until death is staring us in the face.
It's scary: the end of life, goodbyes we may not want to say, a mysterious event from which no one can return to tell us what it's like.
"Even as a society, we won't talk about dying," acknowledges Wendy Hournbuckle, hospice coordinator at Jamestown Hospital. "We say people 'pass on,' they 'go to the great beyond' -- but they don't 'die.' "
That kind of cultural denial may make it even more difficult for people to initiate important conversations about end-of-life choices with family members, physicians, clergy and others.
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