Arthur Riven’s recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, about being both a physician and an Alzheimer’s patient, is perhaps one of the best pieces I’ve read recently about living life on life’s terms with grace.

This bizarre story is true. At face value, it is about a middle-age wife who exercised her elderly husband to death in a swimming pool. But on a gut level we know there is more.

I read the article in The New York Times, “Facing End-of-Life Talks, Doctors Choose to Wait” (Jan 12, 2010) with interest, but ended up feeling something important was missing.