As is clear from the poem and from the experience of many patients and physicians, any death is personal, the final voyage taken by the self. Whether accompanied by an accepting and loving family or by interventionist and neutral resuscitators, it remains the slipping of the soul into a vortex experienced by most individuals only once, and rarely told to another. It is the sound of one hand clapping. There is much to commend a death that is sudden. To the individual dying it is a moment of… shock? terror? regret?… and then nothing—or eternity. But to those left behind it represents the cruelest loss: that for which there has been no preparation. Central to the mystique of sudden death is its untimely occurrence. After all, a sudden end to a debilitating, painful illness is likely kind, and sometimes sought...