Let us imagine Monica once again. The diagnosis is the same, she has no more time than before, and death has not gone anywhere. But now Monica knows that there is not just one predetermined path ahead of her.
She can decide for herself what her farewell should look like. If faith is important to her, prayer, religious rites and spiritual guidance can become a natural part of that path. If Monica is not religious, she can choose an equally dignified secular one.
She can preserve her real voice for her children, tell the stories she is afraid might otherwise disappear with her, and leave behind photographs, letters and words she wants to carry forward. The memory of her no longer has to fit between a name and two dates.
And the place where she is remembered does not have to be a cemetery separated from everyday life. It could become part of a large public park, where memory and life exist beneath the same sky. Trees and flowers grow there, people walk, meet, read and exercise, children play, and the seasons change. People come not only because someone they loved rests there. They come because it is a place they want to return to.
Monica is still afraid to die, because no park and no new system can take away her love of life. But she is less afraid of what comes after. She knows that she can shape her own farewell, preserve her voice and story for those she loves, and that the place where she is remembered could be not dark earth far removed from life, but a living park where her children return not only to grieve, but to live while remembering her.
This is what another path could look like: not a path away from death, but one that passes through it towards a memory that remains among the living. But who will turn this path from a beautiful possibility into reality?