Was this denial, à la Kübler-Ross? I can see how it could be described this way, but I don't believe so. My mother's refusal to accept death was not one 'stage' in the process leading first to acceptance and then (perhaps conveniently for the care givers who could parse their patients' deaths in this way?) to extinction itself. It was at the core of her consciousness. She was determined to live because she simply could not imagine giving in, as she put it to me once, long before her final cancer, to the imperative of dying. I suppose, as was once said of Samuel Beckett, that her quarrel too was with the Book of Genesis.

What it was like to watch Susan Sontag die, by her son, David Rieff.

What are some of your absolute favourite online essays, articles and other pieces of non-fiction writing? One of the Best AskMes Ever has the best essays available on the Internet, including such classics as:

* Politics and the English Language (Orwell)
* In the Beginning Was the Command Line (Stephenson)
* A Person Paper on Purity in Language (Hofstadter)
* Notes on Camp (Sontag)

and many others.