I very much enjoyed the Reflections article by Dr Suss in the April issue of Canadian Family Physician.1 As one who has now attained membership in the group of the population that I believe is classified as very elderly, I can attest to the veracity of his observation that death is a gradual process, as some of my own systems have begun their decline. In truth it probably begins with life itself. I hope that Dr Suss will permit one picayune note of criticism because of my advancing years.
Having immigrated to Canada from the United Kingdom in 1960, I am fluently bilingual in both Canadian and English, and would thus like to remind Dr Suss and the multitude of authors of obituaries in Canada that, in English at least, the word full has no superlative. Sadly, a life lived cannot be more than full. Were it not so, one’s cup could never run over and nocturia would not be a symptom. Nonetheless, I would urge him to continue to live life to the full, and I hope that he will experience many of those sublime moments when the joys of life are unconstrained by human and linguistic boundaries and the limitations of the lachrymal apparatus, and joy overflows.
Footnotes
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Competing interests
None declared
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