Doctors facing their own death can truly begin to understand the vital roles that spirituality and religion play in their patients’ lives. Psychological research suggests that people seek means of symbolic immortality through religion, their children, their creative work, or “experiential transcendence.” Our society has difficulty grasping the finality of death, engaging in widespread denial of life’s end. Ultimately, no one knows what happens when we die, but we should work on finding better ways to accept the finality of death either symbolically or through other means.
See Robert Klitzman, How Should We Respond to Our Own Deaths?, CNN, November 22, 2016.
