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Facing the End Alone
What to Do While Preparing for Your Last Journey?
Death is an inherently personal and solitary journey; however, enduring loneliness during one’s final hours is far from ideal.
The grim scenario raises important questions about the responsibility of the societal systems, legal processes, and support systems for those who find themselves unattended in their final moments.
This question may arise for anyone living alone or while facing mortality with a life-limiting illness.
Here is a short story about my uncle, who lived in a quiet Indian town in the mid-1990s. He was never married and earned his living from a small store in the town’s central market. Other than that, his life was marked by his neighbours’ simplicity and warm smiles. Little did he know that this tranquillity of his world was about to be shattered by an unwelcome visitor, throat cancer.
With no immediate family, he had forged a life of self-reliance. But this diagnosis came like a thunderbolt to him. It shook the placid surface of his life and cast him into the seas of uncertainty.
Being in a non-metropolitan town, the medical facilities were modest, and the nearest city, with more advanced healthcare, was hours…
