My dad was a soldier through and through. To say that he didn’t enjoy growing weak in his old age is a major understatement. Like most of us, he had ideas about the way he wanted to die or the way he did not want to die. “Just take me out back and shoot me,” he would often joke. We all knew he didn’t want to be a burden to anyone.

At the end, weakened and dying of cancer, I’m glad he didn’t ask me to help him die. I would have seriously considered helping him even if I don’t believe in it. Even if our church’s formal statement on caring for the dying rejects assisting in suicide, compassion for my father might have drawn me in.

Memories of Dad’s death were inevitable as I watched Terri Schiavo die in Florida a few months ago. The rhetoric of spotlight-grabbing religious, political and legal spokespeople was both frustrating and embarrassing to me. Most of what was said was on either extreme of an overly volatile issue. We all die, even in our techno-medical age. But does God have a preferred way for us to die? Does God not want us to die in certain ways?

This issue will not go away any time soon. In California, an effort to pass an assisted suicide law is in motion. On the other hand, several states are attempting to craft laws that would not allow the removal of nutrition and hydration at the end of life, even if it’s what the patient wanted.

Knowing he would die soon, Dad made it clear that he wanted no heroic efforts to keep him alive and that he preferred dying at home. He did. God bless the hospice nurses who cared for him in his death. They helped us too; always caring, always attentive. In the final minutes of his life, somehow sensing he would die soon, one of these nurses went to my mother to awaken her so she could be at his side.

It was the care of this nurse and of our family as we surrounded Dad in his final days that we will remember. This care did not mean fighting to the bitter end, using any and all means at our disposal to keep Dad alive. This care did not hesitate to use whatever medications we could to keep Dad comfortable and free of pain.

Does it matter to God how we die? When we know death is inevitable and we may control the process to some degree, I am willing to bet that God would want us to die in the company of those who care.