I’ve been doing hospice and other therapy work with dogs for more than a decade, and the most common question I get from people is “what is a good death?”

I have a good friend whose husband died last year and she said she was afraid he didn’t get to die a good death because they never got to talk through their lives, resolve their difficulties and acknowledge their love for one another.

I thought a lot about this idea, as I often have, and I wanted to share what I think about it. I hope it might be helpful.

I don’t really believe in a “good death” or a “bad death,” death is not that simple, it has many dimensions.

I believe a good death flows from having lived a good life. From doing work one loves, knowing the joy of a loving relationship, learning empathy and compassion, and then living an examined and a meaningful life. A century ago, people got sick and died quickly, often with their families or in their own homes.

It was easy to say goodbye.

Death came quickly, usually in a matter of days or weeks. Today, the environment of death is radically different. Most of us die in hospitals or nursing homes, out of sight. The dying process, say medical researchers, goes on in our world for about six years.

Pharmaceutical and insurance companies make many billions of dollars off of the aging, they will make much more if we live forever.

We know how to keep people alive for so much  longer, but we are not required or inclined to make their lives full or meaningful.

I believe a good death comes from being with a loving person who listens and cares. In my work, I saw no epiphanies, no dramas. By the time people in our time get to dying, they are often spent or stitched or  drugged to bother. There is little closure or settling or wrapping up life’s problems with a sweet ribbon. We make death tough and rewarding, beyond the obvious.

I have a  friend who was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer, and he chose to undergo six awful months of chemotherapy, a treatment that weakened and nearly killed him, and left him to die a painful, drug-soaked death. My friend Ed Gulley faced up to his diagnosis of terminal brain cancer, and he died some months later, in his own home, surrounded by loving members of his family.

He told me his was a “good death.” I could see that it was.

The older people I know tend to buy into the corporate and highly profitable idea of contemporary dying – best spend years making money working in jobs they mostly hate so that they can turn their money over to nursing and retirement and assisted care facilities because they are sure that they can no longer care for ourselves.

Anyone who tells you that you must have a million dollars in the bank to end your life in comfort is both a liar and a cheat. The people I met in hospice who spent their lives working in misery to prepare for aging were the bitterest and most disappointed people I met.

It wasn’t the way they were dying that tormented them, it was the way they had lived, the sacrifices they made for what they thought was security, the trade-offs that are a part of life in corporate America.

In the country, I see a different side of aging, there are plenty of people who choose to live in special environments with lots of help. That is a good choice for many.

There are many people in their 80’s and 90’s staying in their homes because they want to, and yes, because they can. They have friends, even jobs sometimes, and they are active and independent. There is not one story about aging and death, there are many.

Beyond that , what I saw convinced me that a “good death,” if there is such a thing comes from considering death, facing up to it, and making clear what one’s wishes are. Whether extraordinary measures should be taken to keep one alive, and for how long and what purpose and in what condition.

Whether we want to die at home or in a hospital. What care do we want to accept to prolong our lives, and for how long?

A good death is a death we think about and control. To do otherwise is to lose control of one’s own death, one of the most important times in any life.

The people I saw who had “good deaths” thought about how they wished to die, wrote it down, signed legal documents, talked to friends and family members. They did not leave so critical a  decision to anxious family members, or to doctors and hospital or nursing home administrators.

The people I know who had “good deaths,” did not allow themselves to linger in purgatory and pain for years. They faced the idea of death squarely and chose to do it well.

I think the idea of a good death is really a  fantasy, one of those Disney or John Wayne ideas Americans  grow up with, you know, the holy moment, all is spoken, resolved, put aside. Tears and forgiveness flow.

Death is death, it is inherently sad, grace comes from accepting it, not fighting it to the very bitter end. And it will usually be a bitter end, there are no two ways for a person to die.

To do well, one has to skip past the propaganda and hysteria about death in American, and cut to the chase. This is how I want to die.

People die well who decide to die well, and who don’t live the choices and decisions about death to others. A good way to die very badly is to never think or talk about death, to put it into the farthest corners of one life.

But sadly, you can’t push death into a closer, or deny it’s existence for too long. I told my friend her husband had a good death because she loved him and cared for him to the end. It doesn’t get much better than that.

We will all end.