"Death with dignity." "Cruel and unusual punishment."

Values, concepts, tenets that permeate our culture.

"It was a good death." "It was senseless death." "He died for a good cause." "Today is a good day to die."

There was a national debate about "death with dignity" in this country. It had to do with a persons right to determine the time, place, and method of their death. It informed the way we use the brutality of the death penalty. That debate brought about issues such as life versus quality of life and death versus the quality or cruelty of death.

Death began to be seen as part of the human experience. Many of us understood that no one should be forced to endure a long, painful, much less horrific death. Some of us also began to see that forced life, keeping one hooked to machines, or on painkillers that just touch the surface of excruciating pain, was perhaps not really life; that life might have more to it than just existing.

All because we began to talk about death. About assisted suicide.

Anyone who has experienced a loved ones fight with a debilitating disease leading to their death, knows what life versus quality of life means. Anyone who has experienced a loved ones fight with an excruciating and painful death, understands what "good death" means.

"May she pass peacefully." "May he cross over easily."

We even joke about it: “When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.” attributed to Will Rogers

The last meal for a prisoner about to executed, a last cigarette while the firing squad waits, the gathering of family and friends to say good bye to a loved one and to "send them off" with dignity, love, and grace. All part of our shared experience, our shared humanity.

Now I see, for the sake of justifying a political stance, for the sake of winning an argument, to create a diversion, for the sake of saying "I'm right; you're wrong" people saying, "meh, dead is dead."

Not only are you losing your argument, slivers of your humanity are falling away whether you see it or not. It may be that "dead is dead," but how one arrives at dead is of import.

The quality of ones life and of ones death, matters.