Question 9:  Where would you prefer to die?

     As you imagine the ideal situation for the end of your life,
where would you be?  What people, if any, do you have around you?
What special arrangements should you make to insure
that you draw your life to a close in the best style for all concerned?

     Perhaps you not have thought much about the location of your death
because you have not seriously considered that you will die.
But each and every one of us must die somewhere, sometime.
So, if you had a choice, what would be the ideal location?
(In the next section—PART IV—we will discuss the ideal timing.)

     Do you wish to end your days in a nursing home?
Do you expect to die in a hospital, perhaps in the intensive care unit?
Would you prefer to die in a hospice?  Would you choose to die at home?
Or would you prefer some exotic location?

     You might not be able to realize your dream of the best place to die.
But with good planning, you can try to arrange your place of death
to suit you and the others who will be around you when you die.

     If you choose a voluntary death,
then you can select your own setting and the best time.
If others are selecting a merciful death for you,
they can choose the best time and place,
perhaps taking into account any plans you might have
for donating your body to medical science and/or education.

     Wherever you plan to die, you will involve others in your plans.
So you should discuss what roles they will play in your last scene.
And if they are also writing their Advance Directives,
you could come to some mutual understanding
of how each will cooperate in the deaths of the others.
According to your proxies, what would be the best place for your death?
Would they want to be present?
If you plan a voluntary death or a merciful death,
how do you plan to include other people?

     As our society becomes more rational about death,
special places to die might be created,
which will be home-like, since most people prefer to die at home.
But these ideal places to die might not actually be
the places where we lived in the months prior to our deaths.
Perhaps residential hospices will expand their services
so that more of us will choose them as good places to die.

112    YOUR LAST YEAR: CREATING YOUR ADVANCE DIRECTIVE FOR MEDICAL CARE