ii. when modern technology sustains us, too long, too painful, when should we stop?

Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it —— Haruki Murakami

Modern Death.

In the modern medical context, death has been delayed—not resolved. Advances in treatment have extended the biological definition of life, but often at the cost of the lived experience. Patients remain in a state of physical maintenance while cognitive and emotional presence dissolves. The result is a prolonged twilight: not fully alive, not yet dead.

Death, once a shared, natural process, is increasingly isolated—removed from the home, ritual, and landscape. It has become a medical condition rather than a human event. The cultural result is disconnection: from family, from body, from earth. In this condition, grief is unstructured, and death becomes taboo.

A Walk in the Forest.

I remember walking through the forest.There was this leaf—curled, golden, hanging in a net of thin branches.It hadn’t fallen yet. It hovered there, suspended.And in the light, it looked more alive than the green ones around it.

That stayed with me. A death, with grace.

In the modern world, we don’t die—we’re kept going. Our bodies are preserved by machines and chemicals, but our minds, our spirits—they drift somewhere else.

Death is kept at a distance. Sanitized. Avoided.We aren’t allowed to say goodbye.

But I believe in a different kind of leaving.Not one of fear or silence,but one where death is approached with clarity.With dignity. With grace.

We don’t get to choose how we arrive into this world. But maybe—just maybe—we can choose how we go.