On the night my mother died, it snowed. I got the call from the hospital, and drove through the flake-laden darkness to her hospice room for the final time. Death had wiped away all signs of stress, my mom looked peaceful and at least ten years younger. I sat with her body for a bit, eventually moved to gather the flowers and cards and the blanket that had been knitted just for her. I paused at the door for one last look, and then the coroner came to take her away. The rest o

Death baffles us. It’s a curious quirk of American culture, that so much attention is lavished upon the beginning of life, and so little on the end. Instead, there is a whole set of ideas and mentalities and the industries that have sprung forth from these ideologies, conscious or not, on the concealment of aging, the denial of decay. There is a number of broadly accepted practices that exist solely on our fear and avoidance of the most natural counterpart of life: death. F