What is a good death exactly? A palliative care specialist once told me that a good death was hard to come by. A swift and painless departure may be what we would all hope for; that’s not, however, a ‘good’ outcome for those left behind who have to deal with both shock and grief, neither does it give the departing soul much space to reflect. A brief period of awareness first and time to say goodbye? Would that be deemed a ‘good death’?

At the weekend the Catholic archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols made some penetrating remarks about our society’s attitude to death. He was delivering a homily at a Mass for the Sick in the cathedral. The moment of death is central to our pilgrim’s journey, he said. Even the most restricted of lives is ‘lived in transcendence by virtue of being human.’ If we don’t honour this, we do violence to the person. ‘There is a hidden violence in so many of our systems, even those of care, because their operational mode is reductionist.’

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