What if we understand death as a developmental state, like adolescence or midlife?

Dr. Ira Biak is a leading figure in palliative care and hospice in the U.S.

He says we lose sight of the remarkable value of the time of life we call dying

if we forget that it is always a personal and human event and not just a medical one.

So many of us these days catch glimpses of this as we move toward death with loved ones in hospice

or with friends or even strangers through the caring bridge website.

These are often transformative experiences as dense with repair and celebration as with grief and loss.

I don't want to romanticize it and nobody looks forward to it,

but we shouldn't assume that it's only about suffering and it's avoidance or it's suppression.

That in addition to concurrent with the unwanted difficult physical and emotional social strains that illness and dying impose,

there is also experiences, interactions, opportunities that are of profound value for individuals and all who love them.

Contemplating mortality. I'm Christa Tippett and this is on being.

I spoke with Ira Bioch in 2012. He's a professor of medicine at Dartmouth and the former director of palliative medicine at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire.

He became part of the hospice movement as it entered the U.S. in the 1970s and 80s,

dedicated to addressing pain and other suffering with the end of life approaching.

Before that, hard as it is to remember now, medicine was dedicated rather single-mindedly to curing, to fixing what was wrong.

Ira Bioch defined death then the way he believes many still define it now as a failure of our bodies and of medicine.

I think it surprised me a little bit. I'm not sure why when I was looking at your trajectory of your life as a physician

that you spent a pretty good amount of time as an emergency physician, is that right?

Yes, I did. I loved it too, by the way.

Did you?

That's a very frenetically paced and life on the edge and I mean about solving problems.

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