What's a good death? (San 52)

In pastoral training this past summer (and in our coursework this year) we spoke a lot about the idea of a "good death." We wondered if a good death meant that one passed away with all their business in order. Maybe it meant that their family was around them. Perhaps they felt that their life had achieved some higher purpose. We never settled the questions but like any good conundrum it raised many important issues for us as future leaders and made us think.

Today's Daf also speaks about the idea of a "good death." Using one of the most famous texts in the Torah, Love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18)--Rabbi Akiba called this text the highest principle (klal gadol) in the Torah--the Talmud explains that one should choose for a criminal the most "favorable" method of execution during capital punishment. The text reads:

ברור לו מיתה יפה
Choose for him a favorable death (lit. a beautiful death)

 Here are two examples of how this principle works:

1. When one is to be beheaded, one should choose to take a sword to the front of the neck, rather than an ax to the back of the neck because it is a much faster and painless way to die. According to Yad Ramah, this is because the blade of an ax is not as sharp as that of a sword and it encounters bone first rather than the windpipe subsequently smashing part of the neck rather than cutting it cleanly.
2. Burning is performed by pouring heated lead down a criminal's throat causing internal burns and death. However, the Talmud explains that this death is less agonizing  and disfiguring than burning the whole body from the outside.

It's not clear exactly what the Rabbis mean by their statement  Choose for him a favorable death. The two examples point to a number of possibilities. Perhaps it means one should look for a death that causes the least amount of pain. Perhaps it advocates for one that is faster (even if it hurts more). Perhaps it means that one should leave the victim with little external signs of disfigurement (like in the case of burning). Regardless of the exact meaning, we can learn a number of  very important lessons from these texts.

These texts can teach us a lot about how we should approach people at the time of their deaths. A "good death" is one where we minimize pain (we can work with hospice to help make this happen). It is also one where we help a patient avoid suffering during their final moments by helping them settle their affairs. It's also helping them feel like a human as they pass on. As odd as it seems, we learn from this text that if our grandmother wants us to put makeup on her in her deathbed, we should listen.

Of course there is always the question of how much we should encourage our loved ones to fight an illness and how much we should work to make their death comfortable (often these are at odds). Here's is a recent article in the New York Times that struggles with this question when it comes to pain.