In his book Being Mortal, Atul Gawande writes that at least two kinds of courage are required in aging and sickness.

The first, he writes, is the courage to confront the reality of mortality – the courage to seek out the truth of what is to be feared and what is hoped.

That kind of courage is both complex and rare.

Even more daunting, I think, is the second kind of courage – the courage to act on the truth that we find or realize.

There are many reasons to shrink from this idea of courage or put it aside.

For one thing, the wisest course is rarely straightforward; since we can only guess and speculate about the future, we can’t know it.

It is not only hard to know what will happen, but it’s also hard to know what to do about it. Doctors don’t know how to fix the unfixable, and they don’t want to talk about death either, and most see it as a kind of failure.

The corporate media avoids the topic at all costs; the only death we see are violent ones.

Very few people want to open this topic at dinner or family gatherings. Children, in particular, dread the idea and are often angered and upset when it’s raised. Politicians don’t want to come near the subject.

So many people in hospice told me they never got the chance to talk about aging or death with their children; they were accused of being morbid or cowardly, and children don’t wish to deal with it or accept it.

Since Maria and I agree about how to die, I want to tell the rest of my family what I intend to do rather than ask them.

I should make the decision, not them. I’m not asking my daughter to support my dying. I will share my hopes with her.

To me, it’s just the opposite of what children often fear. It takes a lot of courage to think about it and even more to know what to do about it. I’ve witnessed what a gift this can be to everyone I love or who loves me.

But the challenge, writes Gawande, is epic and fundamental: One has to decide whether one’s fears or hopes should matter the most.

When you are young, mortality is remote and easy to push aside. When you’re older, it may be even more complex.

It becomes more challenging to change how you think and plot the future when you are older. Time is running out, which I don’t mean in a morbid sense, but in a truthful one. It’s just the reality.

I’ve learned my lesson from my hospice work, Mansion work, aging, and many friends and family members.

I’ve mastered the first courage. I have that. I credit my spiritual work with showing me the way to go inside and learn the truth about myself, good and bad. It gives me great strength.

I talk about it openly with my doctors and with Maria. We mostly got past the tears and sadness and have come to recognize the almost certain reality that I will die over the following years; I don’t how many, of course, and don’t want to play that game.

I’ll die when it’s my time, and I have nothing to do with that. Maria could well die before me.

I have a lot to do with how I die, and that’s where the second kind of courage comes in. It takes a lot of time, work, and thought to decide what matters most – my fear or my hopes.

Personally, and speaking only for myself, I think they are often the same thing.

I am afraid of dying poorly and without dignity or control, and I hope to plan my death and ensure my wishes are followed.

More and more, I think that is possible. Of course, I will fear death, and I am already talking about it with Maria, my doctors, and my family, which these days means my daughter.

She will not want to talk about it, but she will hear and listen to me. Maria and I share our feelings about what a good death is.

She will support my hopes and soothe my fears. That is an incredible gift to me.

I don’t want to dwell on this, nor do I want to forget. People don’t want to talk about their iwn deaths in America; why would they want to hear too much about mine?

From the first wave of e-mail, I see many people want to think about and hear what I’m thinking. So from time to time, I’ll write about it.

I don’t want to focus on it either; I have a lot of good life ahead of me, and thinking about death is not at the top of my bucket list.

Courage is a tricky thing in our distracted and divided culture. Our culture mainly deals with death in terms of war and violence.

Ordinary people often have to make the most courageous decisions about their lives.

My choice is to find the courage to keep my dignity, control my death, share the experience lovingly with Maria, and leave the world in a slightly better place than I found it.

My hope for the rest of my life is to be better. And then better again.

That may take the most courage of all.