[ericls]

Okay, go tell {your wife, your children, your parents, etc}, and say: “I love you, but there’s a part of of you that I just can’t accept and want to change.” Will they think you still love them? Do you think you can love them that way?

Your love to them should be a source of power to accept all of them. Your love to life should empower you to embrace death.

[scubbo]

Well, sure, if you phrase it in that misleading way then it sounds bad. But death is not "a part of them" - quite the opposite, in fact, there is nothing that is less "of them" than "the process which makes them no longer alive, no longer them".

By your logic, I shouldn't care for my partner when they're ill, or lend a friend money if they need it, or teach a child a skill; their illness, their poverty, their ignorance, are all "part of them", and I should just embrace it rather than trying to change it.

I can play with phrasing too - go tell your loved one "I am happy that you're going to die. I welcome it, and I want it to happen. I wish you would die tomorrow". Report back. Do they feel loved?

> Do you think you can love them that way?

I genuinely think that anyone who embraces someone else's death, except in the case of relief from a painful incurable illness, does _not_ fully love them. They're protecting their own feelings - avoiding their grief - by lying to themselves that death is somehow good or noble or pure, simply because it's natural. There are _plenty_ of things that are "natural" that we all agree we're better off without. Or do you want to catch smallpox or be eaten by a tiger because it's natural?

(And don't for one second think, because death provides relief from pain, that it's good. That just means that incurable pain is _worse_. Getting stabbed in the face is worse than getting stabbed in the hand, but neither is to be welcomed)