95-plus years old, maybe 58 inches tall, maybe 80 pounds big. A colon that had stopped working. A silenced voice that could no longer tell her gathered family she loved them. Lips that were dried and cracked. A sunken face grimacing with each wheezing, irregular, hard-earned breath.

This is the opponent Death chose to take on in February 2007. But if He expected a quick battle, then He hadn't been paying attention.

My grandmother did not fear death, had even intimated to my parents at times that she was more than ready for it, but she couldn't help but fight back ... at least for a while. Fighting back and staying strong was what she had done her whole life - like when she overcame rheumatic fever as a small baby living in impoverished Russia (when neighbors were telling her parents to 'get rid' of her in the river), like when she traveled the long journey to America at the age of nine with only her siblings, like when she was widowed and not yet 50, like when she first got colon cancer in her early 80s, like when she lost most of her sight to macular degeneration.

My grandmother couldn't help but fight back, and god bless her indomitable spirit, but part of me wondered why all the obvious suffering was necessary. As hard as it was to do, we knew when it was time to let her go. We tried to make it as quick as possible. We took away the machinery and most of the wires. The nurses plied her with morphine whenever pain creased her face. But still she fought ... and suffered. Of course she fought. That's what living things do when Death approaches, and brave fighters like my grandmother do it stronger and longer than most.

But when the fight is so unfair, when all know Death is the certain winner, and the end is a matter of days or even hours, isn't there a better way ...?

(To be continued tomorrow)