What is a good death?  Is there such a thing?  After an eight year battle with Renal Cell Carcinoma my wife finally died nine years ago.  She passed while thoroughly drugged, in the wee hours, in a room full of family and friends.  I was holding her left hand and her brother was holding her right.  Though the years leading up to this were tragic and hard this seems like about as good a death as one could hope for. 
    My Mom was as tough a character as you could ever meet.  One of her many mantras throughout her life was "I don't want to die in some GD hospital with GD tubes and wires sticking out of me.  She was a heavy smoker and though she quit with me on November 19, 1988 she got lung cancer anyway.  She eventually passed in her own livingroom one night while alone.  Though I'm sure her actual dying was most unpleasant I sincerely believe she would call her own death a good one.  She was 87, completely independent and self supporting, and died at home on her own terms, without GD tubes and wires sticking out of her. 
     Personally I'd be happy with a quick, painless death of some sort, though it seldom works out that way.  I would consider that a success. 
     Sorry if this is gloomy but death is something we all have to deal with.  It's a part of life. 

Agreed.  A perfect death would be a quick, painless one right after completing some amazing feat like right after catching a thirteen pound bass or bowling a perfect game.  But I'll settle for a sudden painless one 

Old age, affairs in order, surrounded by a loving family, not in a hospital, and peacefully falling asleep one last time never to wake up. That’s the ideal.

NooneOfConsequence wrote on Apr 25^th, 2023 at 5:31pm:

How sad it sounded. "Never wake up."

jw wrote on Sep 13^th, 2024 at 2:52am:

As one movie said:
"Everyone is afraid of death and pain, but a hero is capable of something that makes him a hero."
Your grandfather is a hero, I take my hat off to him.

When I was younger I joked about "hitting the wall at Indy doing 230mph" would be an ok way to go.

I'm similarly from a medical background. For those that don't know, I used to work as a nurse in an old age care ward. Specifically we were a dementia care ward, but we actually ended up with all types. Due to the conditions people that I care for had, often death was seen as a relief, as an almost pleasant thing, and, for a while, I managed to continue on in that job holding that belief that actually I was ok and even good when the residents died as they were no longer suffering or in pain. For a fair few, it could be argued how alive they even were at the end, their brains literally full of holes, unable to eat, talk, walk, dress themselves, clean themselves... They were essentially just bodies.

The thing is, they weren't. It took me a while to even realise, but I was hurting after every death, no matter how peaceful, no matter how painless and no matter how much it was a relief. I think one thing I really learned in that job is that death is really about the people left behind. The person that dies, well... they're dead. Their opinion or feelings don't matter much, it's the people left behind that feel the consequences of death and the consequences of death, whether it's prayed and hope for or comes out of the blue, will always hurt. Such is life.