Jimmay misses my point, though his response was passionate and succinct, and I applaud him for that.
There is dignity in pain; in taking it, harnessing it and using it to concentrate every fibre of your being towards asking how well you've lived. It's the supreme and final lesson.
This also happens to serve as a reminder to assess how well we're using our own lives. This is the attitude which we should have to death, rather than 'they went peacefully/ better him than me/ I dont want to think about how valuable life really is'. Death isnt a culmination of increasingly great life experiences. You rise, plateau then fall.
It's grizzly, it's ugly, it's inevitable, but the point is mostly swept under the rug.
Having said that, I accept that there are some unnatural medical procedures which unnecessarily prolong the agony of a doomed life. I agree with euthanasia in these limited circumstances. But the important thing to me is that they have assessed their life properly, rather than slipped away when clouds started forming -- cheating death no less!