‘I Want to Die Here’

Last Friday I went with a chum to see the heavy metal band Converge. We had glorious good fun.

I have listened to metal since I was 11 years old when a fellow boy scout lent me a Judas Priest cassette tape. I still love its energy, rebellion, the chugging guitars and the thunderous drums. The music on Friday was loud and raucous and generated quite a sizable mosh pit in the crowd, which was packed in like sardines.

I turn 50 in August and consider myself a little too old for mosh pits, so my chum and I found a perch in a balcony where we had a great view of the band and a good vantage point for watching the fray below as the crowd churned.

So I looked down into the audience and caught sight of a man wearing a red T-shirt. Across the back it said in capital letters, “I HOPE I DIE HERE.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about this. Part of me was intrigued; part of me was a little offended at first. To be fair, I never saw the front of the shirt, which maybe would have provided a little more context into what that statement on the back was about.

I wondered what he meant by those words — “I hope I die here.” Did he literally mean there, in the Concord Music Hall in Chicago? Where else had he worn the shirt? Did he want to die there too? The words were bold, but smacked of insincerity.

The offended part of me thought that the shirt was being a little flippant towards death. What would the man’s loved ones say about his apparently thoughtless declaration? What does it say to the many people in this world who are grieving? Is this making light of them?

But then it struck me, despite whatever statement the man was trying to make with his shirt, this is what many patients are effectively saying when they elect hospice. “I want to die here.” Usually, this means at home.

More than 56% of the 1.9 million patients who enrolled in hospice in 2024 received care in their private residence, according to the National Alliance for Care at Home. This was followed by assisted living facilities at 21%, which also could be considered a patient’s home.

For patients, this can be empowering. We don’t get to choose how we die in most cases. We don’t get to choose when we die. But some of us have the opportunity to decide where we die, who is with us when it happens, and whether our care goals are honored.

Hospice gives patients a choice, not only of where they want to die, but how they want to live in their final days. That choice must be honored with high quality care and the rooting out of fraudulent operators who betray patients and compromise that care.

When my time comes, I hope that I get to say, “I want to die here.”