Although ease of reference dictates that we separate end-of-life issues into subtopics, the connections among these matters are pervasive and vital. For example, we deceive ourselves if we foist off patients' decisions to seek death onto the realm of inviolable autonomy but do not address the economic burdens that may make such choices anything but free, or the isolation that can make life unendurably bleak and empty for the old and the sick. Divisions are convenient, but potentially misleading. Any serious answer to the question of how we care for human beings when death looms will engage how we live as well as how we die.