Dying people are very often entirely mistaken about what they fear most. It is not the pain. It never was the pain. The more energetic and resilient fear by far that I have seen is the fear that the rest of us, the living, will after some time and adjustment be able to live our lives, that the end of the dying person’s life doesn’t end much else after all, that the living will continue to be the living and be able to proceed as if the dying person is past, done, over, in some way as if that person had never really, enduringly been.
