Someone once said, "Nothing in life is guaranteed except death." With the recent loss of my grandmother, this has become an incredible realization for me. Looking back on her life was difficult because in recent years it was filled with illness. My fondest memories of her could only be found in my early childhood. Sadly, that somehow made it easier for me to accept her death. She died the day before this paper was assigned, so during the next few days I found myself searching for answers to the questions asked by this assignment, not only for my paper, but for myself as well. Did my grandmother have a "good" death? She had been living in a nursing home for nearly two years and was almost completely handicapped both mentally and physically by the time of her death. A viewing was not held before the funeral. The funeral itself was a closed casket. As sad as it sounds, I do not believe her death was as bad as others may have viewed it. We take so many factors into consideration when trying to evaluate the quality of someone's death. Things like age, cause of death, pain and suffering, and expectancy are only a few of the things we think about. Unfortunately, all of these factors are beyond our control. Is that why they remain so significant to us? I believe the most significant factor in the evaluation of one's death is the person's satisfaction with his or her life because this strengthens their acceptance of death. After all, death is only the end of life.
If death is simply the end of life, we should focus our attention to the person's life. A feeling of completeness would be one of the biggest expectations I would have. This explains why the factor of age is so significant to those who attempt to evaluate the death of others. We tend to accept the death of elder people easier than we do the death of younger people. This is because we feel that our elders have fulfilled their duties and accomplishments in life, while the younger lives are only beginning their experience.
