In my line of work as a hospice chaplain, I find that a lot of patients with terminal diagnosis, are afraid or reluctant to talk about the D word. Once, the daughter of a patient prohibited me from identifying myself as the hospice chaplain because that would scare her dad. She advised that I remove my hospice badge, and identify myself as a representative from a Life-insurance company. I have a hard time pretending to be an insurance agent, but I did it anyway to gain access to the patient with the hope that I could help prepare the patient and the family for the inevitable.

Life Insurance agents are very clever. They will sell you a policy without mentioning the D word. One expression they use is: If something happens to you...your family will be protected. Are you kidding me? Of course something happens to me every day. I get caught up in traffic, I forget to charge my cell phone, or a friend calls with a bad news. But that is not what they mean. They mean death, but they won't say the word.

Another expression is: In the unlikely event of something happening to you. It sounds like an announcement from pilots at the beginning of a flight. In the unlikely event of a water landing, the cushions under the seat will inflate. A plane landing on water is an unlikely event, death is not, but insurance agents won't use the word.

Another tactic they use to get around the D word goes something like this: In the event of your premature passing, you family will be protected.

Premature? The word implies that we are supposed to live up to a certain age. It implies that a certain number of years are guaranteed and if we die before that, it is considered premature. That is only in our mind. Unlike automobiles and appliances, we don’t come with warranty papers in our back pocket; in fact we arrive naked, with no pocket. When it comes to death, there are no guarantees. It could happen to anybody, anywhere, at any age, at any time.

We started dying from the day we were formed in our mother's womb. It is a miracle that we go on living year after year, in the midst of so many life threatening events and situations.

Death denial is actually not healthy. As each day passes, we are 24 hours closer to the edge of the grave or the mouth of the urn. Denying that reality and pretending to ignore it is an exercise in extreme futility. By refusing to acknowledge the impermanence of our existence, we are writing our own script for an anxious and lethargic life.

The more we think about death, the more fully we live. That may sound counter intuitive, but that is the truth. According to Mother Theresa, people who are unable to confront the fact of their own mortality are unable to fully appreciate life.

Bishop John Shelby Spongwho recommends that “human beings must dance with death before they will ever be able to rejoice in life or laugh with it,” says that he “lives in the appreciation that it is the presence of death that actually makes my life precious, since it calls me to live each day fully, and it is by living fully that I enter the timelessness of life.”

In ancient Rome, when a general took a victory parade through the streets, legend has it that he was trailed by a servant whose job it was to repeat to him “Memento Mori” (“Remember, You will Die). We may not be able to hire a servant to remind us but we should be aware of this reality on a daily basis, not to be obsessed with it, but like a glance in a rear view mirror.

Denying death is not going to make it disappear. We should talk about it openly, prepare for it in advance and face it squarely. I believe that unless and until we acknowledge and accept the mystery of death, we will not be able to understand or celebrate the miracle of life and live it fully.