Poetically put, Esther Rauch does a wonderful job addressing the issue of talking about death. This excerpt is from an op ed that appeared in the Bangor Daily News.

Many of us will have written wills, making sure that our coveted possessions are distributed according to our wishes after we die. Few of us have made plans for our own end-of-life goals of care before death. We need to talk about end-of-life care with our families, our physicians, our lawyers, our financial planners, our spiritual advisers and anyone else who can help us to plan for what happens to us as we lay dying.

Emily Dickinson was right in pointing out the “solemn industries” of death. Before death, however, as we move somewhere toward the end of life, we need to enact the solemn industries of dying. We must remember that we are mortal and therefore we will die; we should be prepared.

Esther Rauch is a retired vice president of Bangor Theological Seminary. This column is derived from a talk she gave at Ethics Grand Rounds at Eastern Maine Medical Center as part of a panel on the topic of dying and death.