Showtime Shocks With Ordinary Death

The cable network's documentary 'Time of Death' boldly goes where, someday, we all will

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I'm guessing you don't want to watch this. Why would you? The show is quiet and dignified, but it can still feel invasive, even when the patients explain that they want this story told because they haven't seen it elsewhere. (The filming stops when the subjects request it; some of them even carry cameras.) The final episode includes 19-year-old Nicolle Kissee, who dies of melanoma in her childhood bedroom--and I'll be honest, it wrecked me. At one point in my binge watch, I put on The Walking Dead to give myself a break. Never has cartoonish, stylized, totally fake death been more welcome.

Yet while I can't say I enjoyed watching Time of Death, I was glad to have watched it. I found myself wishing that I'd seen it before my father died. It's cathartic to witness that life does go on (one of many clichés the show renders meaningful). Time of Death could open up a taboo of polite society the way PBS's An American Family did for domestic dysfunction. As Maria says, death is "the big elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about."

Time of Death does, and in the process it asks: What do you consider a good death? What will you value at the end? How will you want to be remembered? It's not important that this show reminds you that you're going to die. You knew that. What matters is that it reminds you to live.

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