I’ve waited my whole life to give someone a good death. Presence grows out of absence. As I lay dying as a teenager, my family reacted like marionettes with their strings cut. I was dying but I was much more alive than the stiffs who surrounded me, people who loved me but who could not act on their love. So it is with a fierce energy, a tremendous passion, that I approach the sickness and death of others. What I was not given, I give in spades. I have the words, the actions,

We are still mired in disease-centred care. As to being seen as a whole human in the healthcare system, you are out of luck.

I think too much about goodness. Like any child I was taught that being good was ideal, “good” was what you should aspire too, “good” was...