"We don't want to talk about unpleasant things," [David Kuhl], who grew up in Plum Coulee, said during a phone interview from Vancouver. "It's like grief. People don't want to hear, see, or feel another person's grief, either."

"We don't lie to the family," [Alexander Chaligne] says. "We tell them 'You are with us to help prepare this person to die and we need to make it as nice as possible.'"

"The important part for me was putting death in the same category as major change," she says. "I have a penchant for clinging to what I know, even if it's obvious that it just ain't so anymore."