While bedridden, I hallucinated wordless conversations with the Grim Reaper. One day, in the landscape of my mind, he rode up to me on a black steed, leaned down and peered into my face, then swirled around and rode off. I ran after him screaming "Don't leave me here! Take me with you!"
That was the last time the Grim Reaper came to see me. With his departure, I knew I would live.
I wasn't happy about it. I knew I faced a long, hard, torturous recovery. Death would have been kinder.
At some point in recent years, I found myself in a group chat. Someone joined. He was a physician who had had a patient die on him that day.
It was a case of 'agreeing to pull the plug.' The man didn't want heroic measures. He knew he was dying.
The physician described this man's final hour and how his breathing slowed, then stopped. It was weirdly cathartic. A lot of stress went out of me and never came back.