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Times

Assisted dying can't be sanitised. Stop trying

I spent the beautiful early summer weekend sitting on a bench in the sunshine, talking about death. I was with a close friend who works as a hospice chaplain. Much of her job involves dispensing spiritual consolation and makeshift blessings. But the main thing that troubles the dying, she says, has nothing to do with faith. As people face the end of their life, the same question comes up again and again: 'How do I know how to die?' They are afraid they will somehow get dying 'wrong' — which sounds absurd, but makes sense when you realise how little experience of death most of us have. You can make the obvious observation here: how much experience of death is it possible to have when