When it comes to talking with people who are dying, or about them, obfuscation, obscuritanism, and euphemizing all take up enormous room in how we theorize and teach and practice palliative care, and yet these practices are rarely asked to pay their way. The practice of “directness,” which to me is a practice of fidelity and authentic witness to the contending truths of dying in a death-phobic time and place, is regularly challenged and sometimes vilified, and the practice of weaving and reweaving the pall stands for compassion and passes without comment.
