Death makes everyone uncomfortable. At least nowadays it does. People don’t want to talk about it before it happens, never mind afterwards. It hasn’t always been this way. In our great grandparents day, death was considered as much a part of life as birth, and comfort with death was natural. People died at home and their bodies were placed in the parlor for days, allowing visitors to view the body and pay their respects. We took care of our deceased with pride. Advances in modern medicine and the inception of funeral homes changed all this. People began surviving previously non-curable diseases and living longer. Physicians considered it a failure to have a patient die, and going into the hospital for life saving measures during our final days became the norm. Funeral homes made death a profession, a business transaction. Passing away was now dealt with off stage by strangers, removing it from our sight and our minds. We lost the personal touch in caring for our loved ones ourselves - both those that have died and those that are suffering someone’s death. Death sucks, but by hiding from death and lacking experience with death, we end up fearing the unknown. Now, that sucks.