To answer the question that wasn’t quite asked…

It isn’t death I find distressing, it’s suffering.

In a hospital or funeral home the suffering comes as a part of the healing process. It may be acute and harsh, but with time will ease.

In a nursing home, the suffering is without hope of recovery, its cessation only in death.

It is the lack of hope I find crushing, it is the lack of hope keeps me from crossing the threshold. The idea that there is no getting better, there is only a long or short struggle towards the end, it is this that drives me to despair.

All that contained suffering, multiplied for every patient, to be alleviated only by death; that is what drives me away despite my best intentions. The cries of anguish, the cries of dementia, repeated down different halls, repeated day after day, it is these things I cannot bear to hear and see, for it is these things I cannot help.

There is no joke or funny story capable of ceasing those cries.

So death does not bother me. It may cause sorrow, but it is a sorrow that contains hope, contains the joyous memories of who the person was. The sorrow of death contains the knowledge that the joyful funny person will live on in your memories, and in memories of others who loved them.