Death — the Final Transition

Death is not a symptom, but the boundary at which every symptom falls silent. And yet it belongs here — not as an illness, but as that which is certain for every human being, and which most people think about least until it catches up with them. Perhaps you are sitting at a bed in which someone you love is dying. Perhaps you have received a diagnosis that confronts you seriously with your own end for the first time. Perhaps a person has been torn from you, and you no longer know how to breathe. Perhaps you woke in the middle of the night with the knowledge: someday it will reach me too.