Another person said it, but I’ll repeat: you don’t know.

People who provide hospice care will tell you that many people have a “good” day right before they die. After weeks or months of decline, they are suddenly lucid and communicative. Families think this is a sign of recovery, but the workers know it’s a sign of the end. The patient is normally gone the next day.

A good friend of mine died of cancer in April. He was diagnosed a bit over a year earlier, and he went through multiple windows of “you’re cancer free!” to “you probably have a month left.” And there were many days the pain was so severe that he wished he would die already.

Six months before he died, he’d tell me, “I think this is it. I don’t think my body can go on.” And then he’d keep going.

If people could tell, I think our culture and our medical systems would look very different.