Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 April 2003
From earliest times, sages have advised us to become comfortable with transience, more than that, to be at peace with our approaching death and to keep it in constant view. Whatever the benefits of such a perspective, they must surely be harvested in abundance by those working in Palliative Care! An ongoing personal cost/benefit analysis of our daily confrontation with death is for many a legacy of the trade. “Why” questions are our persistent companions. They have colored my recent days as I holiday with my family in a cottage on Lac Massawippi in Quebec.