With the End in Mind: Dying, Death, and Wisdom in an Age of Denial

by Kathryn Mannix

didn’t see it coming, but it changed my life. Our leader requested that the nurse to whom Sabine had

though there is a right time), but also with recognition and appreciation

Carly,

singer; she had stopped singing as a young widow when the light in her voice was extinguished by sorrow. Only recently had she returned to her music for solace as her breathing failed. ‘Billie-Ella’, as the nurses admiringly dubbed her, played these tapes constantly, sometimes listening to her heroines and sometimes replaying her own voice and reminiscing about those happy, heady days of her courtship and early marriage. She hummed along as best she could, breathing deeply between bars, assisted by piped oxygen. Her sons were stunned to realise that their mother had such a talent, and such encyclopaedic knowledge of jazz. The nurses were astonished by how much better she tolerated her breathlessness when the music was