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

by Kathryn Mannix

It is the fact that every day counts us down that makes each one such a gift. There are only two days with fewer than twenty-four hours in each lifetime, sitting like bookends astride our lives: one is celebrated every year, yet it is the other that makes us see living as precious.

No matter that a life was well-lived, that an individual was contented with their achievements and satisfied by their lifetime’s tally of rich experiences: at the end of their life they will be described as having ‘lost their battle’, rather than simply having died.

bring the notion of death as the thing that happens at the end of every life back into the realm of the normal.