When I read “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch, I was looking for something I hadn’t already learned or experienced. I’ve lost people to death. I’ve known that death is part of life since I learned the “Now I lay me down to sleep” prayer before I started kindergarten. Now I’m 50-something. What did the story have to offer me?

When I finished the book, I had pages of notes, but three points struck me.

1. Television is a waste of time. I’d heard this before and even spouted it a time or two. It took on a deeper meaning when stated by a man who knew his days on earth were few.

2. Professor Pausch was thankful that he had spent time with his niece and nephew. He was the father of three, but life wasn’t going to allow him to be there while his children grew up. He had helped his nephew and niece through their earlier years though and had thereby fulfilled a desire to parent children without realizing at the time that it would be his only chance.

3. It doesn’t matter how we come to be born or how we die. Many babies are born now to single moms, and despite a huge birth control business, pregnancies continue to come as surprises. But death — shouldn’t our deaths mean something?

It doesn’t matter how you die. I guess it means that even if your death is a painful process, you will eventually stop feeling pain. We have medications now that can keep many people from suffering while they die. I think that’s a good thing for humans to know. Perhaps the professor was telling us that in the process of death, we don’t experience every change that happens to us. From the outside we may look ill and uncomfortable in our struggle, but maybe life processes lose meaning for us.

I have seen people lose interest in food while dying. Their thoughts were turning inward—or beyond earthly life. The things that concern us in our day-to-day lives apparently get forgotten when we are dying, leaving us with less regret. People who have time to prepare for death don’t seem to mind the dying, they just don’t want to suffer pain while doing it.

One man spent years on a machine that helped him breathe, finally telling the woman he loved that he had wearied of the fight and was ready to go on to experience whatever comes next. A child dying of cancer knew it was time to stop the chemotherapy treatments and go to heaven. Such examples show acceptance of a date with death—something we all hold in common.

Maybe pain is for the rest of us. We hate losing the person who died, and it hurts us. Death isn’t always expected, but there are plenty of books about dying your best death. Try to read a couple. Most of all they encourage us to appreciate and enjoy what time we have in this world.

Ronda Bishop is a licensed mental health counselor and experienced parenting educator. She has worked as a counselor, teacher, and life coach for the past 15 years. Questions for Ronda can be e-mailed at Mslrbishop@comcast.net.