A Good Death, by David Warren

There is a joke I remembered from my senior childhood, itself a large number of years ago: “I want to die in peace and tranquility, like my grandfather. Not screaming and panicking, like his passengers.”

Well, my own maternal grandpa was a railway engineer, or as we say today “a train driver.” I hasten to point out that he did not die in a train wreck, though some did on the Sydney and Louisburg Railroad, though few, because its passengers were mostly humble lumps of coal.

I remembered this joke when I was myself being wheeled into surgery, from a heart attack with all the trimmings, four years ago (to the day). This was my way of planning for a good death, or at least as good as possible. …