Credit...Sean Hogan
By BJ Miller
Dr. Miller is a hospice and palliative medicine physician, author of “A Beginner’s Guide to the End: Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death,” and founder of Mettle Health, which provides consultations for patients and caregivers navigating serious illness.
Dec. 18, 2020
This year has awakened us to the fact that we die. We’ve always known it to be true in a technical sense, but a pandemic demands that we internalize this understanding. It’s one thing to acknowledge the deaths of others, and another to accept our own. It’s not just emotionally taxing; it is difficult even to conceive. To do this means to imagine it, reckon with it and, most important, personalize it.