Death. It happens to us all. Sometimes we have a clue, but often we have no idea where, when or how.

I have recently spent a lot of time with my parents. They are both at the last stages of their lives, having lived the best part of almost a century, and both at various stage of health issues that often come with age and lives having lived for well over 80 years.

However, sometimes it is a long journey from life to death, and for many there is a prolonged and protracted state of purgatory, somehow suspended somewhere in between life and the mortuary. It is a horrible place to be, and the description of purgatory is probably apt for the sufferer as well as those with the task of caring for those they love, ever so slowly slipping away. It's cruel. So the question begs: When is the best time to die? A prolonged death is no doubt inherently cruel on those suffering as well as those caring. Months and often years of drips, drugs, catheter bags, pain relief, treatments, hospitalisations, respite, operations - all in the hope of delaying the inevitable. I'm not sure this was the way life - or death - was intended to happen. The only truth is that when we have life, we need to make the most of what we are given, because we just don't know when the best times might not actually be in the days ahead, but we might find out they are way behind us. No one wants to go this way. If it happens to me, just shoot me.