ORANGE COUNTY VOICES : Hospice Brings Dignity to Process of Dying : Death: Program helps patients prepare for inevitable while being cared for in a loving, humane environment.

Death. Even Webster’s dictionary is euphemistic and defines death as “the end,” not the end of life--but the end.

As a society we celebrate birth but ignore, hide and generally pretend that death is something that happens to someone else, preferably someone we don’t know.

Muriel Spark, a Scottish poet, said, “If I had my life to live over I would form the habit of nightly composing myself on thoughts of death. I would practice as it were the remembrance of death. There is no other practice that so intensifies life. Death when it approaches ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life.”

Because none of us is immortal, perhaps we each need to look at how we regard death.

Having worked in an intensive care unit for many years, the reality of death--sudden, painful, unexpected and even welcomed--became part of a normal process. For the past 10 years I have been involved in the AIDS epidemic, so death has become a constant companion to me.

How can we cope with the impending death of a loved one or even ourselves?

Ignore it? Denial works for some people.

Speed it up by suicide? Again this may seem to be the only solution. Proposition 161, on the ballot in last month’s general election, sought to allow physician-assisted suicide in an attempt to control the dying process. Voters rejected it.

I’d like to suggest another option, one that allows the dying person to finish the business of living and prepare for the inevitable while being cared for in a loving, humane, pain-free, comfortable environment.

I’m talking about hospice.

Hospice is not a place. Hospice is a concept, a philosophy, a program for the terminally ill to help them live life to the end without pain. And to help them finish the business of life.

The program can be carried out wherever the person resides; in their own home with their families, in a rest home or in an extended-care facility.

The approach centers on helping the dying--and their loved ones--maintain their dignity and humanness during the dying process while providing palliative care that allows the individual to live as fully as possible during the precious time that remains.

The purpose of hospice is to eliminate the suffering and control the symptoms while concentrating on the dying person, not on their disease.

The goal of hospice is to reach a degree of mental and spiritual preparedness for death. The nonprofit Hospice Memorial Foundation was formed to educate professionals on hospice and provide financial assistance for those who need help seeking it.

Dying patients need physical care. But more than that, they also need help in taking the sting out of death by facing it head-on so that their last days, instead of being filled with physical agony, will be spent in a pain-free environment of caring and love.