Dying is something everyone endures essentially alone. Nothing, therefore, so engages the mind and the emotions as does the ending of one?s life. Except in the case of sudden death, an individual who is ill centers hope on medical treatment and possible cure.

People often go through a series of stages in accepting the reality of their own mortality. Diagnosis of a terminal illness brings shock, which soon gives way to denial. This denial may take the form of searching for any possible cure for the disease. From denial the patient may go on to anger?at himself, at everyone around him, and even at a God who seems not to hear his pleas for recovery.

Anger eventually gives way either to hope for a temporary respite or to deep depression over the impending loss of everyone and everything. This grief over oneself then turns to resignation and acceptance in the face of the inevitable.

How an individual responds depends, of course, on the quality of one?s personal life. For most people it is probably true, as Sir Thomas Browne said, that ?The long habit of living indisposes us for dying.? For those to whom life has been an ordeal, death may come, in Hamlet?s words, as ?a consummation devoutly to be wished.? In the face of such an unknown quantity, however, death often becomes a matter of fear: Aristotle asserted that it ?is the most terrible of all things, for it is the end.?