“How can I thank God enough for you in return for all of the joy that we feel before our God because of you?”

In my pastoral care of people who are in the last years of their lives, for some time I have noted that when people face declining health or physical infirmities, they never say that they fear death. What they fear is the dying. More specifically, what they fear is “becoming a burden to my family." Our prayer is to end our lives in such a way that we will never have to trouble other people by the manner of our passing. I don't want to be a burden. This is the major reason I hear of why people so earnestly stash away thousands in their pension funds, make all sorts of arrangements for their dying through “A Living Will," and, “Advance Directives” specifying just how they are to be di…