My mother died shortly before her 85th birthday, in a quiet hospital room in Connecticut. One of my brothers was down the hall, calling me in California to say, too late, that it was time to jump on a plane. We were not a perfect family. She did not die a perfect death. But she died a 'good-enough' death, thanks to choices she made earlier that seemed brutal at the time.
母亲在即将迎来她85岁生日时，在康涅狄格州一间安静的医院病房内去世了。我一个兄弟在医院楼下的大厅里给当时正在加利福尼亚的我打电话说，赶紧搭飞机过来吧，虽然为时已晚。我们家并非完美无缺。母亲离世时的情况也并非十全十美。但多亏她早些时候所做的选择，她总算是得了善终。而那些选择在当时看起来近乎残酷。
She slept in her own bed until the night before she died. She was lucid and conscious to the end. She avoided what most fear and many ultimately suffer: dying mute, unconscious and 'plugged into machines' in intensive care; or feeling the electric jolt of a cardiac defibrillator during a futile cardiopulmonary resuscitation; or dying demented in a nursing home. She died well because she was willing to die too soon rather than too late.
直到去世的前一天晚上，她都睡在自己的床上。直到最后一刻，她都神智清醒。她避免了那些大部分人都害怕、最后却仍有许多人遭的罪：在重症监护时被插上各种仪器，无声无息、神志不清地死去；或在无谓的心肺复苏中忍受心脏除颤器的电击；或在疗养院中疯疯癫癫地死去。她得以有善终是因为她宁愿早点死去也不愿苟且活着。
Don't get me wrong: My mother, Valerie de la Harpe Butler, loved life. She was descended from Swiss-French and Dutch Calvinist pioneers who 'trekked' with their ox wagons into the dusty interior of South Africa in the mid-1800s. She and my father, Jeffrey Butler, left their African homeland in their early 20s, bursting with immigrant vigor, raised three children (all of whom ultimately moved to California) and built a prosperous life in the U.S. My father became a college professor. My mother, an amateur artist, photographed Wesleyan University faculty for their book jackets, practiced Japanese calligraphy and served tea at four without fail.
别误解我的意思：我母亲瓦莱丽·巴特勒(Valerie de la Harpe Butler)是个热爱生活的人。她是瑞士-法国和荷兰信仰加尔文主义的拓荒者的后裔，这些人在19世纪中期驾着牛车跋山涉水，来到了南非尘土飞扬的内陆地区。她和我父亲杰弗里·巴特勒(Jeffrey Butler)在20岁出头时离开了他们的非洲家乡，带着满腔移民的活力来到美国，并在这里养育了三个子女（他们最后全都搬到了加州），过上了富足的生活。我父亲成为了一名大学教授。我母亲是一名业余艺术家，曾为卫斯理安大学(Wesleyan University)教职员工拍照用作他们的书籍封面，还练习日本书法，并在每天下午四点给我们提供茶点，从未间断。
When she got breast cancer in her 40s, she did not hesitate to undergo medical treatment at its most brutal and effective. After two mastectomies and radiation, she put up her blonde-streaked hair in its classic French twist and returned to the world as the beautiful woman she'd always been. Even as she approached 80, she hiked 2 miles a day, sewed elegant blouses on her Swiss sewing machine, weeded her garden and even stained her own deck.
当她40多岁患上乳腺癌时，她毫不犹豫地接受了最残酷但也最有效的治疗。在经过两次乳房切除术和放射治疗后，她将自己夹杂着金色发丝的头发盘成经典的法式发髻重新回到了现实世界，一如既往地美丽。即使在快到80岁时，她还每天步行两英里（约3.2公里），用她的瑞士缝纫机缝制优雅的衬衫，给花园除草，甚至自己粉刷了露天平台。
She also spent six years as a family caregiver, after a crippling stroke destroyed my father's independence when he was 79 and she was 77. A hastily-inserted pacemaker forced his heart to outlive his brain, and she watched him slide year by year into dementia and misery. His medically-prolonged dying made her painfully aware of health care's default tendency to promote maximum longevity and maximum treatment. It wasn't what she wanted for herself.
在父亲严重中风并失去独立活动能力后，她还担任了六年的家庭看护。当时父亲79岁，母亲77岁。父亲匆匆植入了一个心脏起搏器以维持心脏跳动，但他的大脑却渐渐死去。母亲看着父亲一年年陷入痴呆和痛苦。父亲被医术拉长了的死亡过程让她痛苦地意识到，医疗保健的默认倾向是最大可能地延长寿命、最大可能地进行治疗。那不是她自己想要的。
She was not alone. In California, my home state, a 2012 survey by Lake Research Partners and the Coalition for Compassionate Care of California found that 70% of state residents want to die at home, and national polls have registered even higher proportions. But in fact, nationally, less than a quarter of us do. Two-fifths die in hospitals, and a tragic one-fifth in intensive care, where deaths are often harrowing. This is an amazing disconnect in a society that prides itself on freedom of choice.
有这种想法的人并非只有她一个。莱克研究所(Lake Research Partners)和加州爱心护理联盟(Coalition for Compassionate Care of California) 2012年的一项调查显示，在我所居住的加州，约70%的居民希望死在家中，全国范围的调查显示这一比例甚至更高。但实际上，就全国而言，只有不到四分之一的人最后如愿以偿。五分之二的人死在医院，五分之一的可怜人死在重症监护室中，在那里死亡常常痛苦不堪。在一个以拥有选择自由为傲的社会，这样的落差令人吃惊。
This disconnect has ruinous economic costs. About a quarter of Medicare's $550 billion annual budget pays for medical treatment in the last year of life. Almost a third of Medicare patients have surgery in their last year of life, and nearly one in five in their last month of life. In their last year of life, one-third to one-half of Medicare patients spend time in an intensive care unit, where 10 days of futile flailing can cost as much as $323, 000. Medical overtreatment costs the U.S. health care system an estimated $158 billion to $226 billion a year.
这种情况带来了极其昂贵的经济花销。美国国家老年人医疗保险体系(Medicare)每年5,500亿美元的预算中，大约有四分之一用在了生命最后一年的治疗上。该保险体系接近三分之一的病人在其生命的最后一年接受了手术；将近五分之一的病人在其生命的最后一个月动过手术；有三分之一至二分之一的病人，在他们生命的最后一年曾进入重症监护室接受治疗。重症监护室中，10天徒劳无功的抢救费用可高达323,000美元。过度治疗每年耗费了美国医疗保健体系大约1,580亿美元至2,260亿美元。
Why don't we die the way we say we want to die? In part because we say we want good deaths but act as if we won't die at all. In part because advanced lifesaving technologies have erased the once-bright line between saving a life and prolonging a dying. In part because saying 'Just shoot me' is not a plan. Above all, we've forgotten what our ancestors knew: that preparing for a 'good death' is not a quickie process to save for the panicked ambulance ride to the emergency room. The decisions we make and refuse to make long before we die help determine our pathway to the final reckoning. In the movie 'Little Big Man, ' the Indian chief Old Lodge Skins says, as he goes into battle, 'Today is a good day to die.' My mother lived the last six months of her life that way, and it allowed her to claim a version of the good death our ancestors prized.
为什么我们不以自己说的想要的那种方式死去呢？部分原因在于，虽然我们说想最后有个“好死”，但却表现得似乎永远不会有这一天。也因为，发达的救命技术将挽救生命和延长死亡两者间那条原本清晰的界限抹去了。还因为，说“干脆开枪毙了我吧”毫无用处。更重要的是，我们遗忘了祖先都知道的东西：为“善终”做好准备并非是在被救护车送入急救室惊慌失措的途中匆忙做决定的过程。在死亡远未到来前，我们所做出和拒绝做出的决定将帮助我们决定到达人生终点的途径。在电影《小人物》(Little Big Man)中，当印第安部落首领Old Lodge Skins前去打仗时，他会说：“今天真是适合死去的一天。”我母亲生命的最后六个月就是这样度过的，这让她有资格称自己得到了我们祖先引以为傲的善终。
In the early spring of 2009, I discovered that my mother, then 84, could no longer walk around Wesleyan's indoor athletic 'cage' without catching her breath. She had developed two perilously stiff and leaky heart valves. In a pounding rainstorm, I drove her to Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, a pioneer in heart-valve replacement surgery for the very old. The surgeon told her that if she survived surgery, she could live to be 90. Without it, she had a 50-50 chance of dying within two years. My mother weighed the surgery's real and often underplayed risks of stroke and dementia. Then she said no.
2009年初春，我发现当时84岁的母亲不停下来歇口气就没法绕卫斯理安大学室内运动馆走完一圈。她出现了两次危险的僵硬症，并患有心脏瓣膜症。在一次狂风暴雨中，我开车将她送到了波士顿的布莱根妇女医院(Brigham and Women's Hospital)，这家医院在老年人心脏瓣膜置换术领域处于领先地位。外科医生告诉她，如果撑过这次手术，她将有可能活到90岁。如果不做手术，有50%的可能她将活不过两年。我母亲衡量了手术可能带来的风险：中风和痴呆──这些风险真实存在但往往被轻描淡写──然后说了不。
Her later cardiologists were disturbed by her decision. But I would discover that people of my mother's age are often like Humpty-Dumpty, seemingly vigorous until a mishap, a traumatic surgery or a hospital-acquired infection sets them on a rapid downward spiral. One of my friends watched her 87-year-old mother die gruesomely, over three months, after exactly the surgery my mother rejected.
这一决定让她后来的心脏病医生感到困惑。但我发现，和我母亲同一年纪的人很像童谣中的矮胖子汉普蒂·邓普蒂(Humpty-Dumpty)，看上去精力充沛，一旦接受了痛苦不幸的手术或是得了医院获得性感染，他们的状况便开始急剧下降。我一个朋友眼睁睁看着她87岁的母亲在做完手术后恐怖地死去，整个过程持续了三个月。而这个手术正是我母亲所拒绝的。
Still, my mother's 'heart-failure management' nurse urged me to get her to reconsider. Aside from her heart, the nurse said, my mother was healthy and full of life. Torn, I called my mother's internist. 'I know your mother well enough, and I respect her, ' he said. 'She doesn't want to risk a surgery that could leave her debilitated or bound for a nursing home. I think I would advise the same decision if it was my Mom.'
但我母亲的“心脏衰竭处理”护士敦促我让她再考虑考虑。这名护士说，除了心脏，我母亲的身体非常健康，而且充满活力。我给母亲的内科医生托恩(Torn)打了电话。他说：“我非常了解你的母亲，并且尊敬她。她不想冒险接受一个可能让她逐渐衰竭或是不得不去疗养院生活的手术。我想，如果是我母亲，我也会建议她这么做。”
I called my mother and said, 'Are you sure? The surgeon said you could live to be 90.'
我给母亲打了电话：“你确定吗？那个外科医生说你有可能活到90岁。”
'I don't want to live to be 90, ' she said.
“我不想活到90岁，”她说。
'I'm going to miss you, ' I said, weeping. 'You are not only my mother. You are my friend.'
“我会想你的，”我一边哭一边说，“你不仅是我的母亲，你还是我的朋友。”
That day I stopped pressuring my mother to live forever and began urging her doctors to do less rather than more. A generation of middle-aged sons and daughters are facing this dilemma, in an era when advanced medical technologies hold out the illusion that death can be perfectly controlled and timed.
那天，我停止了给母亲施加压力，不再要求她一直活下去，并且开始劝说她的医生减少而非增加治疗。这一代步入中年的儿女们正面临同样的困境。这个时代，发达的医疗技术制造出了一种幻想，让人们以为死亡可以被完美地掌控和定时。
This was not the world of our ancestors. From the plagues of the Black Death through the 19th century's epidemics of typhoid, childbed fever and tuberculosis, they helplessly watched people die, from youth to old age. By necessity, they learned how to sit at a deathbed and how to die.
这不是我们祖先所生活的世界。从“黑死病”瘟疫到19世纪的伤寒、产褥热和肺结核等流行病，他们无助地看着人们死去，无论老少。他们无可避免地学会了如何坐在临终之床上，面对死亡。
That changed in the 1950s and 1960s, when doctors and inventors in the U.S. and Europe cobbled together astonishing new medical contraptions from washing machines, vacuum cleaners, cattle watering tubs, orange-juice cans and sausage casings. Materials invented or pressed into military service during World War II -- nylon, Dacron, silicon, plastics -- were put to miraculous new civilian uses.
这一情况在20世纪50年代和60年代有所改变。当时，美国和欧洲的医生和发明家受到洗衣机、真空吸尘器、牲畜自动饮水器、橙汁罐和香肠肠衣的启发，捣鼓出了令人惊讶的新医疗器械。二战期间军中发明或应用的材料──尼龙、涤纶、硅和塑料──都奇迹般地有了新的民事用途。
Vaccines, antibiotics, dialysis, open-heart surgery, CPR, the 911 system, cardiac defibrillators, safer surgical techniques, pacemakers -- a whole panoply of lifesaving inventions transformed medical practice and all but abolished natural death. Dying moved from the home to the hospital, obliterating Western death rituals, transforming the meaning of the body, and changing the way families, doctors, nurses -- and even the dying themselves -- behaved at the deathbed. Dying was transformed from a spiritual ordeal into a technological flail.
疫苗、抗生素、透析、开胸手术、心肺复苏术、911紧急救助系统、心脏除颤器、更加安全的外科手术技术、心脏起搏器──全套的救生发明装置改变了医疗行为和其它一切，唯独摈弃了自然死亡。死亡地点从家变成了医院，这一行为抹掉了西方的死亡仪式，转变了身体的意义，改变了家人、医生、护士，甚至死亡本身在临终床榻上的表现。死亡从一种精神考验变成了技术上的胡乱抢救。
Family members who once wiped the brows of the dying were restricted to visiting hours. Often there were no 'last words' because the mouths of the dying were stopped with tubes and their minds sunk in chemical twilights to keep them from tearing out the lines that bound them to Earth. Months after an ICU death, family members experience high rates of anxiety, depression and symptoms of post-traumatic stress.
曾经为弥留之际的家人轻拭额头的亲属现在只能在限定的探视时间内看望病人。而死者也常常没有“最后遗言”，因为他们的嘴里插满了管子，思维因化学药品而一片混沌，这些药品可以防止他们把将其绑在这个世上的线和管子扯掉。重症监护室中持续数月的死亡过程会让死者家属频频感到焦虑、沮丧，并出现创伤后压力的症状。
As the up-to-the-minute machines spread to newly prosperous countries around the world, they transformed the look of the dying body as well. 'When I first started out washing and coffining corpses early in 1965, the majority of cases were home deaths, ' wrote the Japanese Buddhist mortician Shinmon Aoki. '[The bodies] looked like dried-up shells, the chrysalis from which the cicada had fled.
随着最新的机器设备传到世界上那些晚近兴盛起来的国家，这些设备同时也改变了遗体的样子。日本佛教徒、殡葬承办人青木新门(Shinmon Aoki)说：“当我在1965年开始擦洗遗体并为其入殓时，大部分的死者都是在家中去世的。（那些遗体）看起来就像干了的壳，蝉蜕下的壳。”
'Along with the economic advances in our country, though, we no longer see these corpses that look like dead trees, ' he wrote in his memoir, 'Coffinman.' 'The corpses that leave the hospital are all plumped up, both arms blackened painfully by needle marks made at transfusion, some with catheters and tubes still dangling. There's nothing natural about the way they died, as the image of dried leaves falling in autumn would impart. This tells us that our medical facilities leave us no room to think of death.'
青木新门在自己的回忆录《纳棺夫日记》(Coffinman)中写道：“但是随着国家的经济发展，我们再也看不到枯树般的遗体了。那些从医院离开的遗体都呈膨胀状，两条胳膊上全是令人心痛的淤青，那是输液时针头留下的印记。有些遗体上还挂着导尿管和其它管子。他们死去的方式一点都不自然，完全不像秋季时枯叶掉落的画面给人的感觉。这告诉我们，医疗设备已经剥夺了我们思考死亡的空间。”
In the 1400s, a best-selling how-to book called 'Ars Moriendi, ' or 'The Art of Dying, ' offered saints and sinners alike a road map to the deathbed -- framed not as a place of meaningless suffering but as a mighty, transcendent battleground where angels and demons struggled for control of the soul. Family and friends gathered at the bedside and recited prescribed prayers, giving the dying person reassurance, faith and hope. Similar guides, adapted to Protestant and Quaker theologies, stayed in print until the late 1800s. Because we do not have such pathways now, it's no surprise that relatives often panic and insist that 'everything be done, ' even things that are torturous and futile. Any plan seems better than no map at all.
15世纪，一本名为《死亡的艺术》(Ars Moriendi)的畅销指南书为 人和罪人们提供了一张通往死亡之榻的路线图。书中，死亡之榻并不是毫无意义的受苦之地，而是一个巨大的超然战场，天使和恶魔在那里为争夺灵魂的控制权而斗争。家人和朋友聚集在床边，吟诵规定的祈祷文，为即将死去的人带去安慰、信仰和希望。直到19世纪晚期都可在印刷品中找到为适应清教徒和贵格会教徒的神学需要而改编过的相似指南。而现在，死者亲属常常陷入慌张，并坚持“尽一切可能地挽救”，尽管这些挽救措施已经让人痛苦不堪而且毫无用处。出现这样的情况毫不奇怪，因为我们现在已经没有了类似的指南和途径。有个计划看起来总比两眼一抹黑要强。
That spring my mother fixed cracked windows in her basement and threw out files for the book my father never finished writing. She told someone she didn't want to leave a mess for her kids. Her chest pain worsened, and her breathlessness grew severe. 'I'm aching to garden, to tidy up the neglect of my major achievement, ' she wrote in her journal. 'Without it the place would be so ordinary and dull. But so it goes. ACCEPT ACCEPT ACCEPT.'
那年春天，我母亲修好了地下室破裂的窗户，将我父亲一直没有写完的书稿扔掉。她对人说，她不想给孩子们留下一团糟。她的胸痛更加厉害了，呼吸也变得越来越困难。她在日记中写道：“我忍着疼痛来到花园──那是我最大的成就──打理之前疏于照管的地方。如果没有这个花园，这里将变得平淡无奇、了无生气。但事情就是这样。接受，接受，接受。”
In July, a new cardiologist suggested inserting stents to reduce her chest pain and an experimental mitral valve replacement, performed by floating the device down a vein. 'When I mentioned stroke risk, ' he wrote in his clinical notes, 'She immediately was turned off and did not want to pursue further discussion, again desiring only palliative care.'
7月，一名新的心脏病医生建议母亲进行支架植入以减缓胸痛，并接受实验性的二尖瓣置换手术，将装置悬在血管下方。这名医生在自己的临床笔记上写道：“当我提到可能有中风的危险时，她立即拒绝做手术，并且不想再做任何进一步的讨论，再次要求只做缓和治疗。”
That August, she had a heart attack. One of my brothers flew to her hospital bed while I raced to meet a work deadline. The next day I got a call from yet another cardiologist who had been handed my mother's case. The narrowing in my mother's heart vessels was in places too difficult to stent, she said. They were preparing her for heart bypass surgery and valve replacement -- the very surgery she had rejected five months before.
那年8月，她心脏病发作。我一个兄弟坐飞机赶到了她的病床边，当时我正赶着在截止日期前完成一项工作。第二天，我接到了另一名一直在为我母亲进行治疗的心脏病专家打来的电话。她说，我母亲的心血管变得越来越窄，已经很难安装支架了。他们正准备给她做心脏搭桥手术和瓣膜置换手术──这正是她五个月前所拒绝的。
She seemed to be heading down the greased chute toward a series of 'Hail Mary' surgeries -- risky, painful and harrowing, each one increasing the chance that her death, when it came, would take place in intensive care. I later discovered that the cost to Medicare would probably have been in the $80, 000 to $150, 000 range, with higher payments if she'd suffered complications.
她似乎正站在一条通往一系列“万福马利亚”手术的滑道上，这些手术危险、痛苦，令人备受折磨，每一次手术都会增大她死在重症监护室的可能。我后来发现，这些手术可能会耗费国家老年人医疗保险体系80,000美元至150,000美元。如果出现并发症，费用将会更高。
Burning with anger, I told the astonished cardiologist that my mother had rejected surgery when she had a far better chance of surviving it, and I saw no reason to subject her to it now. I later found that in a major study, 13% of patients over 80 who underwent combined valve and bypass surgeries died in the hospital. In a smaller study, 13% died in the hospital and an additional 40% were discharged to nursing homes.
我愤怒地对那名大为惊讶的心脏病医生说，我母亲早在尚有更大的机会撑过手术之时就拒绝了手术，我看不出来现在有什么理由去迫使她接受。后来我发现，一项重要的研究显示，有13%同时接受心脏瓣膜置换术和心脏搭桥手术的80岁以上的病人死在了医院。一项较小规模的研究表明，其中13%的人死在了医院，另有40%的人被送进了疗养中心。
I called my mother in the hospital.
我给在医院的母亲打去电话。
I said, 'I think we're grasping . . .'
我说：“我想我们抓住的不过是……”
' -- at straws, ' she finished my sentence. She was quiet. 'It's hard to give up hope.'
“救命稻草，”她替我说完了这句话。她很安静，说道：“要放弃希望真的很难。”
Four hours later she called back. 'I want you to give my sewing machine to a woman who really sews. It's a Bernina. They don't make them like this anymore. It's all metal, no plastic parts.'
四个小时后，她打来电话。“我想把我的缝纫机送给一个真正会缝制东西的女人。那可是贝尔尼纳(Bernina)牌的。他们现在已经不制造这样的机器了。它是全金属材质的，没有一个塑料部件。”
'I'm ready to die, ' she went on. I could barely recognize my stoic and reserved mother. 'Cherish Brian, ' she said, speaking of my long-term partner. 'I love Brian. I love Brian for what he's done for you.'
“我已经准备好死去了，”她继续说道。母亲一贯坚忍克己，不轻易流露自己的感情，这一刻我几乎认不出她来了。“珍惜布赖恩(Brian)，”她说起和我相处已久的伴侣，“我爱他，因为他为你所做的一切我爱他。”
My mother was now sick enough to qualify for hospice care, and came home tethered to a portable oxygen tank. She apologized to me for not having sufficiently appreciated a loving little book I'd handcrafted in honor of her 80th birthday. She updated her will. A hospice nurse cut off her long white hair. She took digitalis and squirted morphine under her tongue to manage her intense heart pain.
我母亲当时已经病得非常严重，可以接受临终护理了。随后，她带着一个便携式氧气罐回到了家中。她为自己不是特别喜欢一本我在她80岁生日时亲手为她制作的爱心小书而向我道歉。她还更新了遗嘱。一名临终护理人员为她剪短了长长的白发。她开始注射洋地黄，并在舌头下面喷吗啡以缓解心脏剧痛。
She watched a moth emerge from a chrysalis and took her last photograph of its wet crumpled wings. She pulled out her Japanese ink stone and calligraphy brushes and brushed out a final one-stroke circle, what the Japanese call an enso. Below it she wrote, 'For my memorial service.'
她观看了一只蛾子破茧而出的过程，并对着那只蛾子湿哒哒、皱巴巴的翅膀拍下了她此生最后一张照片。她拿出日式砚台和毛笔，画了最后一个一笔而成的圆圈──日本人称之为“禅圆”──并在下面写上了“献给我的追悼会”。
I was making flight plans when she and I talked on the phone for the last time. In an outpouring, I told her how I treasured the memory of her ritual teas and regretted not having learned more of her elegance in domestic matters.
最后一次和她通电话时，我就在做飞回去的计划了。在一次情感倾诉中，我告诉她我是多么珍惜她风雨无阻的下午茶带来的回忆，并后悔没有多学到些她在家庭事务上的优雅。
'But Katy, ' she said, her voice weak. 'You're good at other things.' Then she said, 'There isn't much time.'
“但是，凯蒂，”她用微弱的声音说，“你擅长其它的事情。而且也没有这么多时间。”
That night she could not stop vomiting. She was taken to the inpatient hospice unit with one of my brothers following the ambulance. Once settled into her bed, she took off her hammered silver earrings and said to the nurse, 'I want to get rid of all the garbage.' Naked she had come into the world, and naked she would return. The next morning she told my brother to call his two siblings in California. By the time he got back, she was dead. He broke into sobs.
那天晚上，她不停地呕吐。她被送进了临终病房，我一个兄弟随着救护车一同前往。在被安置上床后，她取下了锻制银耳环，并对护士说：“我想把身上所有的垃圾都去掉。”既然是赤条条来到这个世界，她也要赤条条离去。第二天早上，她让我兄弟给他在加州的两个兄弟姐妹打电话。等他回来时，母亲已经走了。他啜泣起来。
She died too soon for my taste. I agonized over my failure to fly in and help her. But she died the death she chose, not the death anyone else had in mind. Her dying was painful, messy and imperfect, but that is the uncontrollable nature of dying. I tell you her story that we may begin to create a new 'Art of Dying' for our biotechnical age. She died a good-enough death, and she faced it head-on.
在我看来，她去得太快了。我对自己未能飞过去帮她而感到痛苦万分。但她是以自己选择的、而不是其他人所想的死亡方式离去。她的死亡过程痛苦、凌乱，并不完美，但那是死亡无法控制的特性。我告诉你她的故事，也许我们可以开始为这个生物技术时代打造新的“死亡艺术”。她死得善终，她迎面正视了死亡。
（Adapted from Ms. Butler's book, 'Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death, ' to be published Sept. 10 by Scribner.）
（本文编选自Katy Butler的新书《敲响天堂之门：通往善终之路》(Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death)。此书已于9月10日由斯克里布纳出版公司(Scribner)出版。）
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