Over the last two or three years of my grandmother's life, it became harder and harder to visit her because at some point on every occasion she would inform me that she wanted to die. She was too frail to sit up to play the piano, too blind to read music and too deaf to hear the instrument even if she could get her hands on the keyboard, and by that point she literally had nothing else to live for -- even conversation did not mean so much to her. When she finally slipped the surly bonds of earth at 98 years old, I am certain sure that it was a happy release.

When she was younger, in her seventies and eighties, my father (who predeceased her) used to say that she had no intention of planning for illness or disability because she intended to just wake up dead one day.

I believe she was so unhappy at the end of life out of sheer indignant rage that dying took so damned long.