Dearest Ivie (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #15.5)

by J.R. Ward

If you’re sick or old, it doesn’t matter what your bank account or your family tree looks like.”

I’m not scared of death, it’s the suffering that bothers me—and I know I can help that. It’s the journey, not the outcome, that I can change, if that makes sense.”

Death can be a release and a relief for the person, and that is a blessing. The thing is, a lot of times, it is work to die. It requires physical and emotional effort. What sucks is that for most, particularly if they’re dying out of sequence, it’s a job they don’t want. It’s about loss of control, loss of function, loss of identity and independence…loss of choice and decision, of family and friends. But if you can let go of all that, what comes with it is freedom. A soaring freedom, the soul released from its temporary prison of mortality.”

But then I ask them, what do you want to most preserve about yourself right now? What characteristics of yours are most important to you? How can we honor them? Bring them forward? Who do you need to see? Who do you want to see? The reality is that the dying are still living just as everyone who is living is in the process of dying.