Like many Americans, I watched with deep admiration as Cardinal Bernardin lived his last months. His humble honesty, his courage, and his ability to touch other suffering people moved me greatly. In life and in death, he reflected much that we value, even for people of other faiths. But admiration alone can easily convert his death last November into a cultural ideal against which we indict ourselves and those we love for lacking his grace or gentleness.

Because he was so public in his dying, Bernardin opened a moral space that encourages us to reflect about the preconditions for a good death. With all the attention now focused on physician-assisted suicide, we easily forget that most people do not ask their physicians for assistance in dying. Rather they want help in dying well, relatively free of pain and suffering, and with their dignity intact.

The cardinal's dying and death tells us much about reaching that end. Although we cannot control all the medical factors that shape our dying process, we can learn from him about the social and personal conditions that make a good death possible.

The cardinal had the best that technological medicine could offer. Physicians, nurses, and other health-care workers, I suspect, treated him with the utmost respect while addressing his medical condition. They cared for him not as a body in a bed but as a fully embodied, richly complex, honored man. When "rounding," his attending physician, the residents, and medical students did not talk about him but to him. He did not have to worry that his physicians would not respect his wishes, not tell him the truth, or abandon him emotionally, if not practically, as beyond cure.

In contrast, most of us die in the hospital separated from intimate relationships by bright lights, incessant noise, bed rails, and often pain and existential anguish. We may receive treatment we do not want and are powerless to halt, despite the legal rights we have gained. The care the cardinal received should be available to each of us.

Cardinal Bernardin visits a seniors citizens' home about two months before his death.

Once home, he also had all the medical and comfort care he needed, not from a spouse or child —whose love is often tempered by day-to-day burdens, concerns about finances, and the needs of others — but from individuals for whom his care was paramount. He was also able to die at home surrounded by loving affection, attention, conversation, and a sense that he still was integral to the life around him.

Bernardin had other blessings. Clearly his abiding and lifelong faith was central to his dying. But even without his strong faith, we too can turn to our traditions for help. Faith can help us talk more openly about death, what we fear, and how we can imagine a good death. Facing our finitude can profoundly influence how we live. Faith can also encourage us to practice the teachings of our traditions in everyday life, encouraging us to live a life that will comfort and not burden us at death.

Bernardin also knew the priests in the Chicago Archdiocese, his fellow bishops and cardinals, and many others held him in the highest esteem. From the most intimate to the widest circles, love and respect nourished him. Courage thrives in these circumstances.

The cardinal's death thus taught that living and dying are parts of a whole. Some years ago, upon the sudden death of a close friend, the emergency room physician said to me, "Remember what the Orthodox Jews say, live each day as if it were your last." My daughter, then 16, said, "You need to tell a person often how much you love them—before it is too late." Days before his unexpected death (he was only 49 years old), my friend said, "I've lived my life as I've wished; though I have much I want to do, if I died tomorrow I would die content." This message is very different from one that encourages us to prepare living wills or durable powers of attorney.

We can never eliminate all suffering. Nor can those who see suffering as ennobling ask others, who may not share this view, to suffer as exemplars for the rest of us. Yet, we can hope to have some of the blessings that made it possible for Bernardin to die as he did.

The fundamental conditions for a good death should be within our grasp. We need competent, respectful, and truthful medical care and loving attention. If possible, we should have the choice of dying in our own home.

Bernardin's death also asks us to attend to how we live — to be open to giving and receiving love, and to understand that the choices we make affect not only our life but also our death. Thinking about the meaning of our lives is not a task for its last moment. The cardinal nurtured in us the courage to think about a good death for ourselves and those we love, and for holding out the hope that dying well is truly possible.