The following article is excerpted from Arnold’s book Be Not Afraid: Overcoming the Fear of Death.

Even in his late eighties, my father-in-law, Hans, made trips from Connecticut to Europe. A self-taught scholar with a passion for history and religion, he wasn’t going to let age get in the way of conferences and tours. If meeting interesting people required flying long distances, so be it. After all, traveling didn’t wear him out. It rejuvenated him. A family member predicted, “When he dies, he’ll die in harness.”

On Christmas Eve, 1992, at the age of ninety, Hans was sitting on a hay bale, a shepherd’s cloak over his shoulders and a wooden staff in his hand, having volunteered to join in an outdoor nativity pageant. Feeling cold, he asked to be taken indoors, and soon someone was driving him home, just a stone’s throw away. But Hans never made it. Opening the car door for him after the ride, his driver found that he was no longer alive.

To lose a friend or family member unexpectedly is always a shock. True, it can also be a blessing, if he or she is elderly, and has lived a fulfilled life. Surely most people, if they were allowed to choose, would elect to die as Hans did – happily and quickly. But few go that way. For most, the end comes gradually.

“I wish a friend had put this beautiful book in my hands when my husband died.” —Madeleine L’Engle, author, A Wrinkle in Time

Dying almost always involves a hard struggle. Part of it is fear, which is often rooted in uncertainty of the unknown and unknowable future. Part of it may be the urge to fulfill unmet obligations or to be relieved of past regrets or guilt. But part of it is also our natural resistance to the thought that everything we know is coming to an end. Call it survival instinct, the will to live, or whatever – it is a powerful primal force. And except in rare cases (those who die in a heavily medicated state, for instance) it can give a person amazing resilience.